The seller says this 1977 Chevrolet Blazer Chalet 4×4 camper is “rare as heck”, and they’re right; only about 1,800 of them were made over a two-year period. Sadly, it’s also rusty as heck and needs a heck of a full restoration on every square inch inside and out. You can find this pop-top 4×4 camper conversion project listed here on eBay in Everest, Kansas – there is a current bid price of $1,602.44, and a buy-it-now price of $5,350.
Everest, Kansas, a town of 265 people in far Northeast Kansas, was named after a Union Pacific Railroad attorney and created, as a lot of towns were, due to the proximity of a railroad passing through the area. At around 8,000 miles from each other, the highest mountain in the world above sea level, Mt. Everest in Nepal, is as far removed from Everest, Kansas in every way, especially since you can’t drive to Nepal from here, even with a 4×4 Blazer Chalet. And with an elevation of 1,148 feet above sea level, Everest, Kansas is 27,884 feet lower than Nepal’s Mt. Everest. That’s over five miles lower in height. How’s that for a history and geography lesson to get your blood moving this morning? And you thought this site was just about old cars and trucks. Back to this cool Chalet project!
You can see that there is a lot of body rust on this Blazer, but the underside looks surprisingly solid. Like wearing a heavy coat in Everest, Kansas in January and February, when the average low temperature is 16 to 20 degrees F, the underside is wearing a heavy coat of surface rust and will no doubt be blasted and painted during the full restoration that this Blazer/Chalet combo deserves. Yes, that’s the rear door sitting on the floor inside the Chalet camper, along with a few other things. They say the Blazer was originally a burnt orange color, which may be a little easier on the eyes than this two-tone dark brown and tan.
The Chinook company, known for campers and other recreational vehicles, partnered with GM to offer Chevy and GMC versions of the Chalet and Casa Grande pop-top campers mounted on the back of Blazers and Jimmys in 1976 and 1977. We’ve seen about three dozen of them over the years here on Barn Finds, and they’re an interesting combination of 4×4 off-road truck and camper. You can see that the interior will need major work as well as the body of this Blazer, and even the windshield is cracked. The good news is that they’re including a bunch of body repair panels with the sale.
There isn’t much luxury here, but I’m sure a modern RV conversion company could outfit this bare-bones rig for luxury living if that’s what the next owner wants. I’d keep it simple, just so it’s leak-free and has a place to sleep, I’m good. There should be a little stove and refrigerator behind that leaning door.
The engine was originally a 400, but the seller says it’s fitted with a non-running 350-cu.in. OHV V8 now. They don’t know why it was changed, and as much as I rarely say this, it may warrant a bit of a restomod treatment since it’s so rough. They say it originally had factory AC, so they must have a build sheet somewhere. This will be a daunting restoration project since both the truck and camper need almost everything inside and out. Let’s hear how you’d restore this Blazer Chalet, and even better: have any of you been to either Everest, Kansas or Mt. Everest?
Enough time has passed, I can retell my wacky stories, but the old man bought one of these at the Metro auction, it, like many, was rolled, and got it cheap. In fact, there were 2 of these at the auction, both were rolled. He took the “better” of the 2. Turned out to be a bust, as the camper was too damaged to be repaired, and he couldn’t sell it as a regular Blazer, because they cut the roof header for the camper, so nobody wanted it. I think he junked it. Ditch the camper and make a great back woods hooligan 4×4,,,
I’m still unclear why you repeat the bit about “they cut the roof header for the camper.” GM did no such thing, these were installed on ’76 and ’77s using the standard cap bolt holes along with 4 additional for the dinette frame bolting down through the truck bed into the GM frame. It’s a chore to swap out the camper units since they were never designed to be ‘slide-ins,’ but it can be done and has been done by quite a few people. There’s a Casa Grande unit at FB Marketplace in Divide Colorado where the seller has kept the original Jimmy and put a standard factory cap back on – he provided me with the pics of the Jimmy along with its glove compartment tag showing the 16T5 option for the camper unit.
Well, I do appreciate your passion for these, it shows someone will always be an expert in something, and a great feature of the site. Okay, maybe they didn’t cut anything, and who knows what the old man was trying to do, maybe he tried a rear top from an older Blazer, all I know, and I mean no disrespect for your obvious interest, but I thought it was poorly designed, prone to rollovers and dangerous as heck in a cross wind. It sorely could have used dual wheels on the rear.
On the design, I’d agree on the popup roof in particular from the way it sits atop the walls rather than its perimeter overlapping all wall sides. Prone to rollovers? I’d disagree in that these are hardly more prone to that than any other 4×4 pickup with an after market camper on ’em. Possibly even less so since nearly all the the slide-in campers for pickups have permanent raised roofs, therefore more mass higher up. It could be argued that these have the same rollover potential as Blazers, Jimmy, Broncos, and Dodge Ramchargers equipped with aftermarket popup slide-in campers made by 4Wheel, Hallmark, and Sportsman. Shorter wheelbase, more heft in the back would contribute to that. But then pretty much any 4×4 with a shorter wheelbase would be basically prone to rollovers, and if we keep going with that, so would any minimally moderately lifted 4×4, or tall delivery truck for that matter, when it’s suddenly swerved. From all of these rigs I’ve found or learned about, I only know of 4 rollovers, the two you’ve mentioned, one b&w internet photo I found of one upside down in a ditch, and the tale by one of the members of the CK5 forum who said he rolled his Chalet #0213 in 2011 when his front wheel edge caught the grass in the ditch as he aimed to miss what might otherwise have been a head-on collision with a car coming at him in his lane . . . . but he had taken the camper unit off the Blazer a year earlier. It rolled like a regular Blazer would have rolled. So, I mean no disrespect for your concern, but I’m not seeing how you can support the claim that “many were rolled” in any significant numbers which would make these uniquely dangerous and unfit for driving.
For something so rare (approx 1800 built), they sure show up frequently here. There have been 42 Blazer Chalet and Jimmy Casa Grande features. Some are duplicates, but if 36 of them are unique, you’ve featured 2% of total production.
You probably have better math skills than I do; could you provide us with the calculation of the ratio for the number of the Kaiser Darrin produced vs the number of times those have been featured here at BF?
This one is Chalet #1413 (assuming the last digit in his photo of the serial number plate is not an “8”). I’m guessing the seller found this rig out disused in a field and knows basically nothing about them, which would explain his shot-in-the-dark about “the Blazer was originally a burnt orange color.” The ’77 model year rigs came in metallic chocolate brown / tan (which this one appears to be, unless it was repainted), or metallic bronze / tan (as in the one representative photo at his listing of Chalet #1221, where the color in the photo is a bit too dark), or a non-metallic all-tan, or a pastel yellow/tan, or the least common color combo, a pastel orange/tan. Judging from the way the vinyl pop-up sides of the roof are hanging down in disarray, at some long-ago time the spring-loaded roof was probably not tied down securely and then a big upward heave over a bump at speed going down the road caused the roof to pop up and then blow completely off the rig in spectacular fashion. It’s dismaying to see rigs like this with the roof askew and the vinyl material not folded away neatly, tell-tale signs of such a disaster. The Chalet #1677 that sold at the April Barrett-Jackson Palm Beach auction had met a similar fate years earlier, and when the remote online bidder of that one got to see his rig in person for the first time, he demanded an immediate refund since the sellers’s photos basically hid those disaster signs.
Rare yes,as heck not really IMHO…
Auction update: this Chalet sold for $4,050!