You know what pareidolia is, right? Sure you do. It’s when you see faces in things, inanimate things like cars and trucks. This is something I do all the time! If you’d like to stop me, good luck, because you can’t, you can’t stop me from seeing faces in cars because I can’t stop me from doing it either! And, relatedly, this goes back to my fiercely held belief that the headlights are the eyes of a car’s face. Some cars have hidden headlights, and sure, that changes how the face is processed, but it can still work, somehow, and not seem unsettling. But you know what does seem unsettling? Deeply so? The GMC 7000 series of trucks!
And do you know why these trucks feel so unsettling, from a pareidolic persepective? It has to do with the way the headlight “eyes” are handled. Or, really, not handled. Let me walk you through this.
First, let’s look at the kinds of trucks these particular GMC 7000s are based on, the other, somewhat less heavy-duty members of the GMC 7000 family:
Okay, so we have the GMC 7000 on the left there, in a lovely shade of scarlet. As you can see, it has a very face-like grille and headlight setup, giving it a sort of friendly-rugged kind of visage, square of jaw and round of eye, the face of a competent and helpful partner for your worksite.
Next to it, in a ravishing indigo, is a Top Kick series of truck sporting a detail that will become important in a moment: those low-set headlamps, below the grille.
You see, these huge work trucks still need to shine light on the road, so at some point lights set high into the grille will just be too high to be properly useful, hence why big trucks like these tend to mount their lights as low as possible.
So, when GMC decided to make a heavier-duty version of the 7000 series, this is how they solved the headlight position issue:
Oh, what the hell, GMC? Look how they solved the headlight problem: they re-mounted the headlights into the bumper face, which, okay, works fine. Maybe the headlights are a little vulnerable there, but, whatever, sealed beams are cheap. No, the weird part is what they did with the old headlight sockets:
Nothing.
They just left them empty! They didn’t bother to make a new plastic grille molding with no headlight sockets or even some cheap plastic plugs for the holes! They just left those empty, yawning sockets there, which is why I think these trucks have a creepy, undead, zombie-like look to them.
Some emergency vehicles took advantage of these empty sockets by fitting some sort of warning or identification lamps in them, like the red lights you can see on this ex-fire service truck. That helps a bit, though running red headlight-like lights in the front at night carries its own confusion, and we can’t forget that this does also give the truck a certain Mothman menacing-like quality:
Even with the glowing Mothman eyes, I think that’s still an improvement over the empty socket look, which, again, makes these things look like brain-hungry zombies, or whatever the automotive equivalent is (which I hinted at in the top image for this story, and I hope that joke scans).
These trucks weren’t cheap back in the day; a dump truck from around this time – say, 1985 or so – would have cost at least $25,000 to $30,000. That’s a lot of money to spend on something that just looks so…unfinished. If I was a bigshot, say, gravel company owner back in 1985, in my lavish trailer-office decked out in framed Nagel prints, I’d have felt pretty sour when my brand-new dump trucks came rolling up with those horrible gouged-out-eyes look.
I mean, would it have killed GMC to even just do something like this?
A couple of cheap plastic covers that snap into the sockets, that’s all. Cheap and quick, and GMC could even make some money selling replacement ones when they inevitably cracked or got knocked out and lost. They don’t look amazing, but they at least look intentional and not like your brand-new truck is already abandoned in a corner of a junkyard.
Man, GM bean counters were really monsters back in the day. They didn’t give a single, lonely fudge about any of this. And on some level, I get it – does it really matter if this work truck looks kinda weird or creepy in the face? Probably not.
But, then again, all other things being relatively equal, if given a choice between one of these eyeless freaks or a Ford F650 that didn’t look like the undead in the face, which would I have picked? Probably the Ford, because even when we’re talking about utility vehicles, cars are still, fundamentally, not rational.
GM letting the accountants act as the engineers in the 80s? Who knew?
I’m just glad that passenger side mirrors are pretty much standard issue now. Those one eared cars used to creep me out. On the other hand two or more exhaust outlets trigger me now. As do the most commonly seen offset outlets.
Hold on- was the name of the truck really Top Kick? Or was that a category of truck like Reefer trucks?
TopKick is a line of GMC trucks. Chevy equivalent is the Kodiak.
GM used the Topkick name until 2009 when they dropped out of the medium duty market as part of their bankruptcy. They reentered the market in 2019 with the Silverado HD line.
If you were a big shot fleet owner in the 70’s you wouldn’t be spending a dime on things that don’t save you money. Large fleets care about total cost of ownership and cost per mile. They also care a reliability and serviceability which directly ties back to TCO. Trucks are tools – nothing more / nothing less.
It is the little guys that get wrapped up in how their truck looks and waste a bunch of money on chrome and other farkles
But because your trucks are big and typically used as a billboard, you still want them to look well maintained. Empty headlight pods make it look like you’re running a slightly broken vehicle. Plus cops might get confused, leading to your drivers getting pulled over and causing downtime.
Further, I’d expect most of these were built to low-bid contracts. Not only that but 2 of the 6 total codes were for fire trucks, and between them and utilities I’d expect more to have had extra lighting in the original headlight holes than not.
If I were tasked with driving one on the regular, the feature I’d hope the boss sprung for would be a suspension seat in place of the base-trim-pickup grade bench since the ride had to be downright brutal.
Even if they’d put something there, Torch’s cover would’ve been too costly. Cutting a mold, and presumably a different one for the Chevy grille would’ve been a lot more than just slapping bright-metal headlight sized caps in the holes.
Torch is a poet.
I always hated seeing the Topkicks when I was a kid the 7000 were ok but I still thought ugly especially comparied to Ford 700s and macks i would see a lot plus the Kenworth and Peterbilts I would see often. But now I haven’t seen a topkick in so long that I find it looks better now. My uncle had a fleet of Topkicks, 7000s, f700 and some smaller stuff like e series and GM box vans for his company. His son now runs almost all npr, hino, f550 and f750 with a few eseries and express box vans.
What do vegetarian zombies say?
“Grains… grains… grains…”
Ha, “(which I hinted at in the top image for this story, and I hope that joke scans)”
Yeah, when I saw the top image I snorted which startled my napping cat awake. Yeah, I gotta be careful when taking a sip of coffee or have a cat curled up asleep in my lap (or both) when reading stuff like this.
“Jeepers creepers, where’d you get those peepers…”
Damnit I love GM. Just about every cab I’ve ever seen converted to HD use will use some sort of blanking plate (think state snowplows). This is just so… Fuggit it’ll do. I mean, at the end of the day it’s a truck to do work.
I still think the Top Kick looks stranger, but excellent work Jason, in that now I know why!
The Top Kick looks weirdly modern. Like the current GMC 2500, it has design language inspired by a vehicle that’s already been crashed.
I see large military trucks like this occasionally. The holes for the stock headlights are there but the lights themselves are moved below.
I have a friend who runs a junk service that started his company with a 7000 dump truck with the bumper lights, and he filled the headlight holes with green lights (his company color) which made it look harmless during the day but sort of creepy at night. His current fleet of Isuzu cabovers and F550/650s isn’t nearly as menacing.
So, The Green Hornet changed rides?
These are 4wd conversions (maybe offered by the factory or through a factory-approved upfit). DOT has a maximum headlight height of 54″ which is why they were relocated to the bumpers. Most manufacturers put blanks in there there days. Maybe they were thinking additional cooling…
Contracted upfitters makes a lot of sense. Lax and backward as US DOT lighting requirements were/are, those chassis are hiked up way too much for ground clearance to have the mid-grille headlights be within spec.
I believe you are correct.
Make the blanker panels big X’s for the LOL.
I assume that on the later zombiefied models the color was called Cranberries.
Straight out of a Gashlycrumb Tinies. This one covers the letters G, M, and C.
A is for Alice who fell into muck, B is for Basil mauled by zombie truck.
“If I was a bigshot, say, gravel company owner back in 1985, in my lavish trailer-office decked out in framed Nagel prints”
… more like Richard Petty, Bobby Allison, and Darrel Waltrip posters… with a giant amber glass ashtray full of Winstons.
My current office is on the upper level of a building that was a mom and pop sand & gravel plant until the mid ’80s, their offices were downstairs, we currently use what was their house. The downstairs looks like somebody turned out the lights in 1984 and went home, and then later came back and piled a bunch of cardboard boxes and old office equipment everywhere. But, there’s still all their old rate tables, maps, contact lists, etc all pinned to the walls, desks and filing cabinets are as they were 40 years ago. No decorative posters, but there are a number of ash trays. And they really liked that fake basement rec room paneling
The ’70s died kicking and screaming.
My team moved into a building like that a few years ago. No ashtrays, but I found four dictaphones hidden in a back room.
We have a backroom full of old vinyl records, because the original owner’s son worked as a DJ in the 70s and 80s. That room no longer has electricity and is kind of sketchy, also, I’m pretty sure they’ve got to all be warped by now
Worth a look. I bet management would never give you permission to disappear them, but if there are any names you recognize, warped or not, somebody might want them; some people never play their collection anyway. Hell, even the whole lot at a yard sale will net you a buck or two! You could ferret them away one at a time in your pant cuff like Andy Dufresne digging his way out of Shawshank.
Okay, maybe not in your cuff, but still.
Yeah, it’s weird and lazy, but I’m going to put it in the fun quirk category, not the dealbreaker one.
Plus the opportunities for accessorizing are endless (see earlier comment about googly eyes)!
I’m gonna clear up a misconception about my good buddy Mothman. His eyes glow because of light reflecting off his tapetum lucidum. Totally normal for him since he is nocturnal. Heck of a guy. Reminds me, poker night is at his place this week
It’s reminiscent of what was done to one of the iconic French trucks. It went from a confident face (Saviem SG) to a kind of skull (TRM 4000).
note our French passion for gear levers planted in the dashboard
I’m inclined to think that the headlight relocation on those came into play more because of impending European headlight height standardizations. Ever notice that by the mid 1970s or so, virtually all European trucks had their headlights mounted in or just barely above the bumper, which was at a regulated height. But then, Europe in general has always been the leader in automotive lighting designs and standards.
You’re right, it must be a regulatory issue, even the VAB armored vehicle had very low headlights… and ineffective! (I drove one when I was a soldier)
These trucks remind me of the Winnie the Pooh “They Took my eyes” meme.
From the photo caption: “96.75 BBC with stake body and Top Kick with van body”
I have never read a more concise description of an adult video. Something really disturbing is happening and if you click you have a problem.
Almost got zombificated by one myself. I was working my way through school, just like my older brother. He was working a roofing job in the next state over and one of the laborers didn’t show up, so I went over and worked on that guy’s ID. Because I was 15. The third day the boss tossed me the keys to the GMC 7000, said take a break and run this load to the dump.
A couple miles down the road I found myself without brakes going down a hill in that GMC 7000. 15 year old me thought nothing of my personal safety or others; I only lamented that if I wrecked the truck I would experience a significant delay in obtaining a driver’s license.
I observed a long driveway going up to the left, took it with some haste, and somehow came to a stop (killing the engine) about 25 feet from a garage. A lady flew out of the house to see what was up and I calmly asked if I could use her phone. She smiled and asked if it was to call my mother.
Cheap plastic covers that mimic the grill are boring, what these really needed were 7″ googly eyes.
Bonus points if you put them on springs that release every time you hit the brakes really hard.
I know Torch has the photoshop skills to update this article with a gif of these very excellent suggestions O.O
Man, I even have some old Chevy/GMC Medium Duty brochures stashed somewhere that I used to peruse as a young teen, and I don’t remember ever seeing that particular package with a light setup like that.