At $10,800, Is This 1984 Chevy S-10 Dually Conversion Van a Great Deal, Or Just Great?
The most amazing feature of today’s Nice Price or No Dice S-10 conversion van isn’t its dually rear axle, it’s its gull-wing door! Let’s see if this odd, and oddly intriguing throwback is worth throwing down five figures.
It’s long been said that death and taxes are two inescapable inevitabilities in life. Except in Nevada, of course, where there is no income tax. For Nevadans, it’s only death. Probably from the heat. I’d like to add one more inevitability: the No Dice loss of last Friday’s Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona project car at its $39,999 price. Now mind you, the seller claimed to have reduced that price all the way down from $80K, but that didn’t make the price any more palatable. At the end of the day, it came in at a 98.9 percent No Dice vote, the most stinging rebuke we’ve ever seen. Also, that 1.1 percent of you who voted otherwise should see me after class.
Postulate this: could there be anything cooler for a kid than to be dropped off at school or practice in a vehicle with gull-wing doors? I mean, the only better way would be to arrive in the sidecar of a V12-powered motorcycle piloted by Beyonce.
This 1984 Chevy S-10 conversion fulfills that childhood dream of a grand arrival with a gull-wing style door. That most pleasurable of portals sits on the side of its enclosed aft half. That add-on van part also comes with two-level theater-style seating that can convert to a semi-flat seating surface and a dually rear axle. It may very well be the greatest and most versatile vehicle ever imagined.
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According to the ad, this is one of only five such conversion S-10s ever built. One must ponder which such greatness was so unfairly constrained. This was built in the ‘80s and who knows what went on back then? Honestly, that decade is pretty much a blur for me.
Underneath the amazing conversion bodywork lies an S-10 platform and cab, powered by a 115 horsepower 2.8-liter V6 which drives the quartet of rear tires through a three-speed column-shifted automatic. If the ad is accurate, it carries a clean title and 99,000 miles on the clock.
Now, one of the downsides of offering something for sale on the Internet is the likelihood that prospective buyers will do a little online research, potentially discovering previous sales or perhaps other, less-than-favorable information about the product in question. There doesn’t seem to be anything particularly nefarious in this S-10’s past, but there is an article about the last time an attempt was made for it to change hands. Yep, this isn’t this Chevy’s first rodeo.
Per the June 2020 article (the ad is long gone), the truck was offered on Facebook Marketplace with 98,996 miles showing and a price tag of $4,800. A few differences are notable between the pics from back then and those in the current Craigslist ad. Among the most noticeable of those is the removal of the running boards on the sides of the cab and the replacement of the broken grille with one that looks to be intact. Nothing has been done about the surface rust on the front fender, however.
There’s a bit more info in the older article, gleaned from the ad. According to that, the conversion was created by a company named New World Editions, Inc, which, honestly sounds like the name of an ethnically-inclusive boy band. It also states that the truck was originally part of an estate.
The current ad doesn’t even give us that info. The pictures do show a truck that looks to be in decent shape with a wonderful ‘80s brown paint scheme and somewhat sad Pep Boys wheel covers. Inside, it’s all brown velour with beige piping atop gold shag wall-to-wall on the floor. Surrounding that, all the original ambient lighting and window treatments seem intact. The truck has A/C with what looks to be a new receiver under the hood. It’s questionable whether that would be up to cooling the entire interior. A shot of the door sill indicates that the truck’s original color was white.
As I noted, having a history on the Web can sometimes be a bad thing. In the case of this S-10 conversion, that means the $4,800 asking price from two years ago. At least seeing as the present seller is asking $10,800 for the truck. That’s more than double in two years with nothing really to show for the higher amount. I know inflation has been pretty out of hand the past year or so, but I don’t think it’s been THAT bad.
What do you say? Is this amazing S-10 conversion worth that $10,800 asking? Or, for that much, are the kids just going to have to be disappointed?
You decide!
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
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