There is something innately alluring to me, as a Texan, about a pickup truck. I’d like to think it has something to do with an appreciation for utility, but I live in a city apartment. It’s rare that I need a 4’x8′ sheet of plywood or 200 pounds of gravel. While I respect the utility of a truck, it’s not currently a requisite feature for me at this point in my life.
I thought it was because I wanted to tow something. I’ve been quietly eyeing trailers, hoping that one day I’ll have the space and spare change to acquire a vintage Airstream. While I’ve been cross-shopping trucks for such a purpose, I’m also entertained by the idea of buying a completely unlikely tow vehicle like a Panamera V8.
Some would say that the need for a truck is really a mask for male inadequacy, but given the number of Volvo 240s I’ve owned, that doesn’t seem likely either. What I think non-truck people misunderstand about trucks is, simply, that they look cool. Trucks look cool. This is the main reason I like trucks. And the stylistic flourish that I love most in trucks is the two-tone paint job.
You know who does the two-tone paint job better than almost anyone? Ford. I love a two-tone Ford truck, and they’ve been doing this forever.
Check out this 1941 Ford tow truck, which is one of the oldest two-tone trucks I could find. There’s no reason why this truck, which was a promotional vehicle, needed to be two-tone. It doesn’t enhance visibility or provide extra cooling. It does, however, provide extra cool-ing. It just looks cool.
This isn’t to say there’s not a reason why two-tone works on trucks.
As you can see in this lovely tableau of Seventh-Gen F-150s, that’s a lot of flat surface on the side of a truck. On the short-bed black model it’s not so bad thanks to a little brightwork. The dually at least has some surface change with the fender, although it does look quite flat. The extended-cab truck stands out here, right? Obviously, the short-bed, flareside in red with the black graphics also looks quite cool, but there’s something about the tow-tone that I can’t look past.
It even works on big trucks, like this cab-over Ford heavy-duty truck. This blue over cream is especially of the era, and the little flourish of the 45-degree line breaks up all the right angles quite well.
The British arm of Ford also tried to do this with its Thames trailer with… mixed results.
Above, this 1987 Ford F-150 XLT Lariat is probably the most popular and common example of a two-tone truck, with a wide strip of white offset by red rocker panels and a red hood/beltline. You see this on Silverados and Rams as well.
By the time my beloved 10th-generation F-150, you can see it’s been toned down a little. The rocker panels still have the contrasting color, but the upper graphic is now just a little stripe that hints at the old style. There are obviously modern trucks that have this two-tone paint again, and I think it’s kind of the ideal.
Obviously, it works for non-trucks as well. Even the Ford Aerostar got two-tone:
I think I’ve been inside this van. I feel like every mom in the ’80s had this van.
It obviously works on cars as well, like this Ford Taunus, but I particularly love it on trucks. Damn. Keep me away from the auction sites, please.
Top photo: Ford Heritage Vault
I was at one of my sons baseball games and a parent had a 2015 Silverado that had the white stripe put down the center of the side. He also had “BIG 10” decals added. He spent a bunch of time talking with other dads about the truck. The 2 tone was the regular scene in the 80’s & 90’s.
I’ve seen those “BIG 10” edition trucks online, I think they look great. IMO the 2 tone really works with the lines of this generation of GM truck, I think it wouldn’t look nearly as good on the current generation. The 2015 in particular looks good, the grille that year is even reminiscent of the 80’s squarebody trucks, which had great 2-tones.
I know this is a Cold Start sub assignment, but I like to think if you’d appended a What I’m Listening To” segment for this post it would’ve been “867-5309/Jenny.”
Were…..These days when GM tries to renew the interest in two – tone paint, it just seems to look wrong. I have not seen Ford or Ram try it again, but I would not hate to see some of the Sticker package Rams from the 70’s try to make a more glorious come back. The current warlocks greatly lack a step side bed and gold filigree patterns around the panels.
Someone is offering a two tone wrap for modern f150s and I think it looks pretty good.
https://blog.vipautoaccessories.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/hero.jpg
Notthe worst, but I would want to bring back the chrome trim around the white, or perhaps outline that with a pinstripe. Honestly this is the same with a lot of racing stripe packages fromt he factory these days as well. it does not look bad really, just unfinished since almost all the old stuff it harkens back to had chrome trim around the other color or the second pinstripe around the stripes. https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.classicindustries.com%2Fproduct%2F80012.html%3Fsrsltid%3DAfmBOorPqKVM_WzL3kN2aduhz2p-7HngrOoBhjeAMPRAVh91s_pMgJaZ&psig=AOvVaw3Sd-LQUQw092XaJtxGMHH2&ust=1752601508228000&source=images&cd=vfe&opi=89978449&ved=0CBkQjhxqFwoTCODt1cvzvI4DFQAAAAAdAAAAABAE
I won’t say it is bad, but it evokes the mental image a 50-year-old dad trying to squeeze into his high school football jersey and realizing how fat he’s gotten.
I was similarly disappointed when I read that Dodge had a new Warlock package and then saw the photos. Like you said, honoring that nameplate would have taken no more than a handful of gold accents and a step side box, with a shortbed single cab at least available even though most buyers would probably go bigger. A option list including gold wheels and wood stakeside panels would have been amazing. But no. It was just a murdered-out grey pickup. Boo. A reissue in name only.
indeed
Agreed, booo. The Express and Warlock will never be replicated properly. Hollywood and Detroit both are lacking in new ideas. Reboots effing suck
Not just trucks; the world needs more two-tone paints jobs.
I have an ’89 F150 custom, red with a white stripe just like the top shot and I could not agree more.
I would propose a corollary to the Two-Tone-Theorem: The best trucks are ones you don’t need a stepladder to get into.
Ford offered four different styes of two tone for their mid 80’s F150s. My 1985 supercab had the Combination two tone with the accent color on the roof and sides.
Check out page 21 of this F150 brochure from the Ford Heritage Vault.
https://fordheritagevault.com/scripts/mwimain.dll/144/DESCRIPTION_OPAC3/FORD_DETAIL?sessionsearch&exp=sisn%20246495
The blue/silver two-tone is a popular combination in Texas, especially around Dallas, for some reason.
I’ve been ranting about this to whoever will listen to me (or pretend to listen). Thick stripes down the side of pickups were so darn classy, especially white on a real color. And trucks are so enormously tall now, they have plenty of room to work with and visually slim down. It would be the perfect antidote to all the uber masculine murdered out brodozers.
I agree. Growing up my dad had an all white ’88 F-150 which got hit by a runaway driverless classic Mustang while sitting at a traffic light (don’t work around the starter relay with tools if the car is in gear!) and when he got it repaired he decided to get it repainted in two-tone white/red, or the opposite of ’87 shown here.
This makes me miss my ’64 F100, with its wonderful blue-over-blue two-tone paint scheme, similar to the linked image, but with light blue instead of white.
https://images.app.goo.gl/NETP53yvfyvckN5m6
I would agree with you but for one exception:
In 1973 my Dad bought an F100 Custom off the lot.
Yes it was two-tone.
The colors were yellow and brown.
How I hated looking at that toilet-bowl truck.
I like the word play irony of buying a “Custom” straight off the lot.
I mean, I understand, it’s just funny.
Yeah, in Ford-speak of the 60s and 70s “Custom” meant the basest of the base. My dad had a 1968 Ford “Custom” 4-door sedan; it wasn’t even good enough to be a Galaxie 500. My grandparents’ 1973 Ford Galaxie 500 was so base it wasn’t even good enough to be an LTD. When I later got the ’73 Galaxie I had to go pull an AM radio from my uncle’s salvage yard and install it myself. Both were actually decent enough cars for the time, but there were absolutely no frills (I don’t count the vinyl roof on the ’73 Galaxie because it was there to hide bad roof seams, not to class it up).
Yes – In the 50’s, Custom (Also “Customline” and “Custom Deluxe”) was a top, or near top of the line Ford before “Fairlane” came along
By the late 60’s early 70’s – Custom meant “Taxi” and Custom 500 meant “We’re poor (or Nuns, or Mennonite) – but we still wanted the biggest Ford we could get.”
I agree, but I’m also (obviously) very fond of former fleet trucks in good single colors: Forest Service, old fire trucks, things like that. Anything but plain white.
My grandad bought his cars at government auctions. His trucks were generally Forest Service green. Miss you, grandpa.
Always love single-color, non-metallic Forest Service vehicles. 🙂
And grandpas too of couse.
My grandfather had a 66 Ford Custom 500 from the Virginia forest service, it was black with a blue interior. 4-doors and was great basic transportation while looking pretty mean.
One of the Aerostars we had when I was growing up was that silver and blue two-tone.
I’ve always appreciated two-tone paint schemes on cars, particularly where the body sculpture lines create natural divisions to accent with color and contrast. Most pickups had some sort of this going on to break up the expanse of sheetmetal, so they definitely look good.
Just contrasting color below the beltline panels (or sometimes plastic cladding in tis place) gave some visual interest on simpler 1990s aero designs. The problem, though, was the overly blobby 2000’s (worst, possibly, being the restyled Taurus/Sable…) which often just didn’t have any logical place on the body styling to define a splash of different color.
Now we have all these rather fussy, multi-faceted creases and cutlines on current car designs. It seems like at least some of them could be a canvas for more playful paint schemes instead of the typical white and gray shades.
Agreed
Showing the more modern F-150 shows how much it has deviated from what makes a truck a truck. It’s just an SUV where the stuff you put in the back might get wet.
I miss two-tone paint jobs.
Ford only does the king ranch two tone paint now. It looks good on Super Duty’s, I think it looks bad on 150’s. Not sure what the difference is.
I wish more companies would do it again, especially colors in the middle or top of the truck (not just a white/black roof or whatever this crap they do now is). I am honestly surprised RAM does not do this. They offer the best color options to pick from, and always have fun ones, regardless of what you think of the company itself.
Blue and tan on mine, couldn’t agree more.
Agree. Not only did the trucks in the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s offer two-tones, they offered different styles of two-tones. I also miss two-tones.
Some friends of ours just had a son turn 16. They’re practical people so, unlike so many of the families in our area who just hand the kid a recently off-lease Lexus or 4Runner, they actually helped him buy an F-150 circa 1988 or so — and yes, it’s two-tone gray and in really good shape.
While IMO that’s a little much for a new driver to handle on regular school trips (tight parking lot!) or just driving around with friends, I still think it’s better than 90% of other “first cars” out there. Especially if the kid has to pay for gas! The parents have a 15yo Sienna and 10yo Highlander, neither of which he probably wanted anyway 😉
The small town high school I went to in potato country had a high percentage of farm kids that drove relatively new trucks, (no doubt tax write offs as “farm equipment”). They tended to see a lot more pavement than dirt, and were generally better optioned than your typical work truck.
The town in general was loaded with the the things (at one point they had more Raptors than Jurassic Park) and it was typical to see quite a few of them in the high school parking lot every day.
Of course these same kids (like us poor folks that did seasonal work for the farmers) also worked the spud harvest, typically driving spud trucks to ferry the freshly dug potatoes from the fields to the cellars.
I can tell you from experience, once you’ve driven a 50,000 pound spud truck down rock and gravel back roads, taken it down the highway at 60+ mph, and backed the thing a hundred or more feet into an empty cellar, at all of 15 or 16 years old, an HD truck is nothing.
Even where I live now, Suburbans are common mom cars. It all boils down to what you get comfortable with.
Suburbans/Tahoes still handily beat minivans for moms; and pickups (or Wranglers) for dads. But vans are still the backbones, right behind 3-row crossovers.
On the other end of the spectrum from the kid I mentioned is someone more typical: An 18yo who just got an F150 Raptor despite a horrible driving history. His parents paid for it because he agreed to go to junior college on a baseball scholarship (instead of paying his own way at a big state school and riding the bench). I can see the economic argument there, but I also don’t like the message it sends.
My kids have both asked if they can have our minivan when they turn 16. 🙂
Does this mean minivans aren’t cool anymore (again)?
They were never cool.
Practical? Of course. Is being practical cool? Yes. But that does not make the minivan itself cool.
When my kids were in highschool, some teens wanted their parents old minivans. They added custom speaker boxes in the far back, upgraded the stereo system, and had the “party taxi” used to carry the friend group around.
These kids were more interested in having “quality time” with their friends than wrenching on cars (though that group also existed – they usually raced their cars within in earshot of our house every weekend during the summer).
So to that group, the minivans were definitely cool.
I think the big factor in these great two tone paint jobs is the fact one of the tones is a real color. Manufacturers today will offer slate gray on gunmetal gray and act like it is a bold color package.
I’ve always been fond of the two-tone Fox body Mustangs of the mid to late 80s.
Two-tone paint on pickups always seems to me to scream functional but with a dash of style and a sign of not taking things too seriously. If there’s any pickup that should adopt it now, it’s the Maverick.
Need some of the to complete the look – https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/31/Oxford_full_brogue_spectator_shoes.jpg/1280px-Oxford_full_brogue_spectator_shoes.jpg
Love this but it does make me miss my 86 F-150, two tone with brown on top and bottom along with tan in between
Ford could even make gray look fetching – the dark gray/light gray, bisected by a blue accent stripe, Mustangs of the 80s looked wonderful.