Just when I was thinking, gee, it’s been a long time since I reviewed an El Camino, in fact, maybe I never have…. two popped up! On the right is a 1977 with a new engine, and on the left we have an ’81, with an engine installed 80,000 miles ago. Mike sent us the tip on the ’77, while Mitchell G sent the ’81 our way. Both are on craigslist, with vastly different prices: the seller of the ’77 wants $8500, and it’s located in Larkspur, Colorado, while the ’81 will cost its new owner just $2000, and it’s located in Hackensack, New Jersey.

The El Camino belonged to the “coupe utility” niche, created in 1934 in Australia when a farmer’s wife asked for a car that would take the family to church on Sunday and still haul their pigs to market on Monday. Studebaker, Terraplane, then Ford and Chevrolet all flirted with the body style. Chevy’s solution was introduced in 1959, based on a Brookwood station wagon platform. It played second fiddle to Ford’s swanky Ranchero, which had arrived in 1957. Chevy killed the model after only two years. Reconsidering how it addressed the market, Chevy brought out a new El Camino in 1964 based on the Chevelle; this time, it was aimed at the utility buyer, offering only V6s and small V8s as options along with austere sheet metal. Buyers bit: about 137,000 copies were sold in the four years of that second-gen production run, and the count rapidly climbed to well over 45k a year as the years passed. The ’81 has plenty of surface rust in the bed, and the floor pans are said to be rusted out; the ’77 wears a hydraulically-assisted bed topper.

Here we have the ’81 on the right again, and the ’77 on the left. We can tell at a glance who has been the better caretaker. The later car’s dash is cracked, the headrest is missing on the driver’s side, the carpet is torn, the seat belts are sagging. This is the car with rust in the floors…

No one wanted to provide an engine photo, unfortunately. In these model years, a variety of V6s and V8s were available. The ’77 has a brand new V8 backed by an automatic; it runs and drives well. Over in New Jersey, the ’81 has a 350 cu. in. V8 Goodwrench motor with 80k miles on it. Meanwhile, finding an original El Camino is nigh impossible; many have been modernized in one way or another, including with big engines never found in this model – these tend to bring the best money. This nice ’72 sold for just under $7000 – punctuating the ’77 seller’s ask of $8500 with a question mark. Which of these would you choose?