We’ve seen enough Chevrolet Blazer K5 Chalets come up for sale that it’s obvious plenty of people kept thier camping rigs safe and secure after the road trip was over. These factory-backed short-bed, four-wheel-drive pickups are becoming more valuable by the day it seems, with survivors like this commanding the biggest asking prices of all. For as much as we’ve seen these cool conversions popping up for sale, I have to ask: is anyone who ponies up the cash for one actually using it for camping? This Chalet has just over 100,000 miles and is unrestored, according to the seller, depsite still shining up like new. Find it here on eBay with bids to $20,100 and the reserve unmet.
Among the many calling cards of the Chalet are its camper shell, decal stripes, and front-mounted spare tire, all of which are accounted for here. The decals are essnetial to the Chalet appearance package, and seeing a truck with its original stripes still intact suggests many years in a hospitable climate and pleny of covered storage. The body on the truck itself also looks quite nice, and pickups of this vintage will absolutely rust if left to sit in a snow belt state. Clearly, this K5 Chalet was loved, and that emphasis on long-term preservation is obvious in the cabin and camper shell as well. The seller claims this is truck number 58 out of 1,500 built.
Wow – look at the cabin. Absolutely beautiful, and incredible to think it is unrestored. The seating surfaces are seemingly blemish-free, and the same goes for the carpets and cooktop surfaces. These vintage materials can look quite tired by now if the truck was used by someone who truly lived in it as opposed to treating it like the special occasion rig it is. The fake-wood surfaces can easily de-laminate in extreme temperatures, and I see none of that here. The carpets – well, carpets in cars that have been on the road for six months can look completely disgusting, so kudos to the previous owners that looked after this rare Chalet package truck. The seller descibes the various ways the top can be extended and the couches fold out for sleeping areas, and it occurs to you this was a brilliant package that was well ahead of its time.
The 350 V8 and TH350 transmission are both numbers-matching, and the fact that this isn’t a restored truck is even more incredible when you scope out the engine bay. The Chevy is said to run well and is equipped with power steering, power brakes, and air conditioning, but the A/C compressor is not turning on at the moment. The Blazer has resided in Montana and Arizona, two great regions to own a truck like this, and it also helps to explain why the cosmetics are so good. The Chalet continues to find favor with buyers seemingly willing to pay over $30,000 for a nice one, and while the current bid is a ways off from what the dealer has listed on their website ($59,900), I’m willing to bet someone would be willing to go over $40,000 for one in unrestored condition.
The Blazer Chalet is practically the Barn Finds mascot by now.
For something I saw pictures of in a “grown-up” car magazine at my dad’s work about when it was new and I was not yet 5, and spent the rest of my childhood, adolescence, 20s and most of my 30s unsure whether it ever really existed or was a figment of my car-crazed-kid imagination (and to this day have never seen in person) that’s quite a survival rate.
Yes, it is accurate to say this rig “has resided in Montana and Arizona,” but that is not the whole story. When I first saw it in person in November 2005, represented for sale by a relative of the long-term owner, it was still wearing its Alaska plates; the owner was someone who split his time between there and Arizona. Montana was where it was originally sold. After I first saw it, it bounced around among classic car dealers in Raleigh NC, Escondido, CA, then a week or so at the 2009 Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale auction ( https://www.barrett-jackson.com/Events/Event/Details/1976-CHEVROLET-BLAZER-CHALET-CAMPER-70813 ), and then Abilene, TX, Santa Cruz, CA, Reno, NV, Rapid City, SD, Newcastle, WY, before again landing for about a week or so at the January Barrett-Jackson auction, where its auction was the 26th ( https://www.barrett-jackson.com/Events/Event/Details/1976-CHEVROLET-K5-BLAZER-251787 ).
It is, however, partly restored. When I saw it in late 2005, its camper stripes were partly faded out and the back door decal was significantly faded. I have the photos to prove that. Sometime before its auction at a Raleigh NC classic car auction, the factory original brown vinyl dinette seats were reupholstered in the incorrect cloth you see today and its wheels were repainted in an incorrect tan matching the truck body. At some point between 2013 and 2017, it’s hood was noticeably buckled, and that was repaired sometime before it arrived at the Rapid City, SD midsummer 2019 auction. I have the photos to prove those conditions as well, gleaned from the assorted prior owners sales ads.
That’s a lot of info we would never have known or suspected… stuff a buyer needs to know. Thank you!
Just curious… given that these all look pretty much the same, how do you know that all these Chalets you’ve seen at various times in various places are the same vehicle?
@CCFisher: You ask an entirely valid question, which is healthy skepticism that all folks should have when authoritative assertions are offered. It’s the main reason I started tracking these. Way back in 2006, I was running out of fingers & toes counting up the rigs I knew of from sales listings and owners at our (now defunct) Yahoo Autos Groups Chalet forum. When an eBay seller claimed outright back then that his Chalet #0310 was one of 40 remaining in the country, that’s when I started up my spreadsheet detailing all I could jot down on these. I’m the former owner of Chalet #1747, and am still the current caretaker of the VERY old blazerchalet.com website. My mega-spreadsheet list, first mentioned near the end in this 2009 Hemmings article https://www.hemmings.com/stories/article/blazer-chalet-and-jimmy-casa-grande , has grown to around 590-ish which I can individually ID in some way, via photos or distinct unique details.
True, all ’76s, Chevys & GMC Casa Grandes, have the same basic color combo, with the variant being metallic maroon side accents very similar in tone to the pastel burnt orange seen here — very frustrating when it comes to differentiating between ’em all! I’ve had multiple overlapping entries in my spreadsheet where it took me a while to spot how separate photos I’d collected over several years were one-and-the-same vehicle. It helps lots when sellers list the camper serial numbers and/or the truck VINs. The tell-tale details of this #0058 are the JC Whitney Chevy emblem door lock protectors, the round silver metal stereo speakers, the rough square weave of the grayish dinette seat covers, the antenna mount at the lower front corner of the driver’s side camper taillight, the tan-colored rear bumper step, the slightly crooked turquoise-ish sticker on the LPG tank door, the stainless lower rear fender arch protectors, and the “Frontier Chevy” Billings MT dealer sticker.
If only BF attached VINs to these entries, then this valuable information wouldn’t be floating adrift in the ether.
Where did the interior pic come from? It’s not in the ad.
@Pat: the interior pic is from the classic car dealer’s website listing of it, about halfway down in his larger pic pile: https://www.uniqueclassiccars.com/vehicles/3063/1976-chevrolet-k5-blazer-chalet
Another One. NO DEAL
I’ve seen more Chalets in the last 2 years, than the first 40 years of their existence.
Setting aside the rigs I was alerted to and went over to look at in person, and all the ones I’ve gleaned from deliberate intensive searches for sales ads (approaching 600 collectively now in some way), I have literally only seen one single rig “in the wild” simply driving down the street, and it was headed in the opposite direction where there was no way I could get turned around in time to go chasing after it. I’ve never chanced across seeing one just parked somewhere.
Thanks for all your great historical information on these vehicles when they come up on this site. It is great that there are people out there you provide and check and balance to this process. Keep up the great work!
Located in:
Mankato, Minnesota
Not a short bed pick-up as the author claims…but a Blazer as the title of the article states.
The number of these here seems odd given the other vehicles that could / should be featured.
Two In One Day
$40,100 and RNM? Why not list it for $50k BIN? Inflation and prices are getting more ridiculous.
Ended: Mar 04, 2022 , 1:00PM
Current bid:US $45,850.00
[ 81 bids ]
Reserve not met
With the $30k purchase price at Barrett-Jackson + $3k in auction commissions + whatever expenses this seller had in going to, attending, and leaving the auction with this rig that apparently hasn’t needed a thing done to it in the intervening 5 weeks, yesterday’s eBay auction result would have been a nice profit that I would have gladly taken.
Ending today @ accauctions.com! Bidding is now up to almost $38,000
https://www.allcollectorcars.com/classic-car-auctions/vehicles/1976-chevrolet-k5-blazer-chalet/