You know GM’s GMT400 platform even if you don’t think you know it. It underpinned millions of GM trucks and SUVs for the entirety of the 1990s to the point where, if you stood anywhere near an American road at the turn of the millennium, the chance that there was a GMT400 within sight was 87.3 percent according to a study I’m making up right now. But now it’s been 20 years, and you may be wondering how well these once-ubiquitous trucks held up. Well, I just drove a 250,000 mile model that someone traded in to Galpin Ford, and it was a steaming pile with a heart of gold. Here, watch me review this trade-in with Mad Mike of Pimp My Ride fame, and you’ll understand what I mean.
First things first: Allow me to introduce Mad Mike, the legendary technician whom we all know and love from Pimp My Ride, but who also starred in Car Kings and who now works at Galpin Auto Sports.
Actually, first things first: Watch this week’s episode of Trade-In-Tuesday:
OK, now back to Mad Mike. If you’ve somehow suffered an injury to the cranium and forgotten about Mad Mike, here’s a reminder of his genius:
Anyway, since you’re watching video reminders, now that you’ve gotten to know my sometimes-co-host all over again, allow this legendary commercial to bring you back to when the GMT400 reigned supreme:
That’s right, the GMT400 was that “Like A Rock” Chevy pickup that made its way into your and my and, frankly, collective consciousness — probably permanently.
It may seem hard to believe, but when it debuted for 1988, it was considered a “softening” of an otherwise simple/work-oriented trucks. It featured an interior that Chevy billed as “the most comfortable Chevy Pickup interior ever,” which means it bathed you in an ocean of hard plastic:
Another thing that may be hard to believe is that the GMT400 — known lovingly as the “OBS” or “Old Body Style” Chevy — was in some ways thought of as a smoother, more aerodynamic pickup than Chevys of yore:
Up front was a coil-sprung or torsion-bar independent front suspension, while in the back there was a leaf-sprung solid axle.
The GMC Yukon was basically the same as the Chevy Tahoe, but of course, GMC focused on luxury. Just look at how this brochure talks about “glove-soft leather” and electrically-actuated “shift-on-the-fly four-wheel drive”:
The Yukon that Mad Mike and I drove was sadly not the two-door, but rather the four-door. Really, the 250,000 mile Yukon was a 3.5-door, because one of the doors was thoroughly sagging to the point that the door’s latch didn’t line up with the striker on the B-pillar.
Speaking of doors, I love the Yukon’s rear barn doors, but only the right one seemed to open:
The black paint was severely faded from the California sun, with the hood now white and the roof now rust-brown. Also apparent when looking at the vehicle from the side: It seemed to sit quite low:
Under the hood, a shoestring held the 5.7-liter Chevy 350’s intake onto its throttle body, and only now am I realizing that I totally blew the opportunity to make a “shoestring budget” joke in that video above:
Someone had wrapped a nasty towel around the brake master cylinder, and yes, that’s because it leaks, which is quite dangerous.
I also noticed that the oil was a bit low:
Inside, there was trash and a burlap blanket in the rear, but the seats were quite nice. Up front, things got strange, and not just because the driver’s seat was wrapped in a T-shirt and the headliner was falling:
First, the seats were absolutely chewed up:
But more importantly, look at what’s on the floor:
Astro turf floor mats! It’s genius! Or maybe it’s not, but I appreciate the wackiness!
Once in the driver’s seat, I turned the key and nothing happened.
So I grabbed the jump starter that’s pretty much permanently sitting in the Galpin Used Car lot, and…
It fired right up! Actually, the 350 sounded awesome, though as you may be able to surmise by my less-than-amused expression in the picture below, it wasn’t perfect — I had to keep my foot on the gas to keep the engine from shutting off:
Having driven junkers before, I was used to the whole “can’t let off the pedal or the car will die” situation, and was able to limp the thing — while holding the driver’s door closed — over to my new sometimes-co-host, Mad Mike, who made this expression upon first seeing this steaming pile:
Here Mike is showing me that the vehicle’s lock has probably been “popped” at some point based on the damaged key hole:
Here Mike is explaining the speakers in the back:
Mike grabbed some brake fluid to top off that leaky master cylinder:
And here’s the look he made when I hit the gas pedal on a nice, straight stretch of road. That old Chevy V8 legitimately pulled, and it sounded good! “This thing’s got balls!” Mike says in the video.
Honestly, as beat up as that Yukon was, the powertrain was absolute magic. The only thing better was what happened when we hit a speed-bump at speed:
The thing just soaked it up! Like, remarkably!
I do think there may have been a bad engine mount, because there was some serious clunking happening when we came to a stop, as Mike’s face indicates:
During our drive, we found this stripped-out car on the side of the road near Van Nuys:
For some reason, Mike felt like trying to convince this Corvette owner that we wanted to race (the owner didn’t bite):
In the end, Mad Mike taught me about the “Corn Horn,” which is a horn that sellers of Crema-covered corn-on-the-cob play to lure in customers. Mike even bought me a corn, and it was life-changingly delicious!
Watch our YouTube video at the top of this article to see the whole episode of us driving a vehicle that somehow has an amazing powertrain and suspension, but terrible everything else. The episode includes Mad Mike teaching me about what he calls “Afro American Ingenuity,” among other things. Honestly, I think I’m going to learn a lot from Mike.
I had an ’02 Yukon XL, all it did was run. I let it go with 250K on it, it was still running pretty good, but everything non-engine related was falling apart. Tracy, you need Mad Mike with you on more of these adventures, hilarious stuff!
I often think of selling my ’13 4runner and picking up a GMT800 Yukon/Tahoe for cheap. I still see so many of them around, even in New England. Shoot, I still see GMT400’s on a daily basis.
I didn’t have “The hoopty adventures of Mad Mike and David” on my 2024 bingo card, but I am damn glad to have gotten it, that was really great.
Yo, dawg, We heard that you love Rust. So we plated the entire interior of yo BMW i3 with iron, exposed it all to salt, and now yo entire car is rusty
I haven’t watched the video yet, so forgive me if the answer is in there. What does Galpin possibly have to gain by taking this in on trade? Isn’t the hassle of offloading it more costly than whatever they gave the customer? And, honestly how much was that? Or is it just a courtesy thing? Make the customer happy by not having to scrap it themselves?
I don’t know about California, but some states will let you reduce the taxable amount of a car purchase by the value of the trade in. So, even if this Yukon is going straight to the scrapper, it could have reduces the taxable value on the new car by a grand or so.
There are times I miss my 1995 C1500. Great truck.
They’re unkillable, good looking (I still see these as secret service/killer suit henchman cars), and modern enough to have a/c while manual-crank windows were an option. What’s not to love? (GM interiors, but still!)
Guy at my work daily drives one of these suburbans with 435,000 miles on it. Looks slightly better than the one in the story. It just refuses to die.
Are there any GM trucks from the 80s to mid 2000s that don’t have sagging doors? Not just from damage either. Everyone I know that has owned one has replaced the hinge pins at least once by now.
GM makes this fancy-pants replacement pin/bushing kit now. Its expensive as all hell ($100+ for a pair) but it seems like it might actually fix the problem.
You should make a format out of this. You and Mad Mike getting food in trade ins.
Pimp my Trade in Tuesdays. The Further Adventures of Mad Mike and David Tracy.
Well, you know I’m a GMT400 fan…
This is legitimately hysterical – I especially enjoyed mad Mike’s ratings at the end. “Brakes? Fuckin zero” hahaha
This has the same vibe as my son’s 96 Suburban. This was a 1500 with the 5.7 and luxury trim, and absolutely thrashed interior from a previous owner hauling hunting dogs in the Willamette Valley. As bought (dirt cheap) it reeked of wet dog and mold, and subsequently reeked of industrial disinfectant after going Ordo Exterminatus on it. The engine was still strong despite glitter in the oil and evidence of a replacement short block and it rode OK. It hung on for a few years before being sold cheap as self propelled 4L60 transmission after he got a 99 3/4 ton Suburban.
That sounds like the 1995 Suburban I owned for a while in the early 2000s. My brother bought it from a private seller in Michigan and sold it to me. Clean, with no rust, and although it had high mileage, it ran smooth and trouble-free. Even with the 5.7, it got way much better mileage than the newish Honda Civic my now ex-wife owned. I wound up selling it to my nephew in Georgia.
Yeah barn doors are awesome 😀
I also like the huge glass-to-door ratio, especially on the barn doors themselves!
And no one mentions the 454SS wheels this thing is sitting on. They may be pitted and ugly, but those were some nice wheels and are hard to come by these days.
“Yo dawg, I heard you like crazy car shows and crazy car journalists, so I gave you a crazy car show star on your crazy car website so you can read about crazy car show tv stars while you read crazy car stories.”
“Crema-covered corn-on-the-cob” is more commonly called “elote”.
The first one of these I drove was in the very early 90’s.
Our unit in Yokota AB (outside Tokyo) was issued an Air Force (dark enamel) Blue diesel flatbed.
I was the only one in my unit who was brave (or stupid) enough to drive that big noisy Murican LHD behemoth on regular civilian RHD roads up to the Japanese Air Base north of us and back every few months.
The other one belonged to my bestie up in West Seattle. It was an ancient dark grey 4WD shortbed step side – with leather bucket seats out of an SUV that had long outgrown their factory upholstery and ducttape seat covers. It had a million miles on it, was loud, smelly, dented, scratched, and VERY THIRSTY. After he died of his 2nd heart attack, it was sent to the scrappers.
This is some great content here. We need regular infusions of Mike!
I had an 88 2500 pickup like this manual with L 123- had it on the farm and a bull tried to mate or kill it- every panel was smashed flat but it still ran- best thing was people would always yield to it as it looked like it was going to kill them
I factory ordered a 1999 Tahoe police model. Blue over grey interior. It was a great ride. Only downside was somnambulistic steering feel and unexceptional fuel economy. I had the door hinge pins replaced, plus a transmission, fuel pump and steering sensor. Everything else was original.
I traded it in at 136,000 miles on a factory ordered 2014 Cruze diesel (119,000 miles) that I still have.
Half of the delivery drivers at my dealership use GMT400’s, and they’re by far the most reliable ones in the fleet. None of them have any paint or suspension components intact, but they always get the job done.
Sitting low because it’s 2wd. 2 Wheel Dr. with the 350 Vortech motor pretty cool combination. When these four doors came out around 95 all of a sudden they were everywhere and a cool “tough “replacement for a minivan and it could tow a lot.
Someone should write an article about the design of these, because it’s damn good.
Agreed. Stock good looking stock, or stripped of badges and moldings with some tasteful wheels, these look really good – 4wd or 2wd. The 2000 carryover model Tahoe SS is a prime example if you have not seen it before. Considering design was solidified in mid 80s, it’s a winner
It was an in-joke, but here you go:
https://www.theautopian.com/why-general-motors-gmt400-truck-design-remains-legendary-30-years-later/
Got me! I’ll have to read that later. Thanks for the link.
IMO these trucks still look FANTASTIC today. I like the Suburban a little better than the Tahoe, I feel the ‘Ho looks a bit stubby and the Sub’s proportions look better, but I still like both. The rare ’99 Z71’s are cool, with the factory forged wheels.
You make my day. Mostly cause I like your humor.
“Yo dawg, I heard you liked rust….”
YES!!! Came here to post this one and love that someone in the community beat me to it! Best readership ever.
They’re great trucks. My ‘96 has almost 250k and gets used every day. It, however, is in far better shape than that!