1982 Chevy C10 – Duane S.

The Orangestorm

In the fall of 1996 I was in search of a vehicle I thought would be safe for my then 16 year old son to start driving when a couple of fellow workers came in one day and told me of these bright orange pickup trucks for sale at a local mosquito abatement garage nearby. When I had the chance later that day I went to go look at them and thought, great, bright color, heavy rear bumper, a full chassis and being able to sit higher should be a pretty safe vehicle for a beginner driver. It was the only rwd of the four the others being 4wd. Well I won the bid that I had to submit, brought it home to surprise my son until his first day of driving it to school when it was spotted by a classmate that laughed at it embarrassing my son and nicked named it the “orangestorm”. I can only guess because it took over the parking lot like a storm? Anyway some of his friends and teacher’s got a kick out of it and loaded up the back with some of his classmates and took photos to put it in the schools one hundredth anniversary yearbook. A few weeks later it was rear ended by one of the schools bus drivers who claimed he didn’t see it. My family wouldn’t allow me to see the damage. Got it repaired and that winter taking a short cut through an alley my son slid into a telephone pole and the insurance company wanted to total the truck. Working with a body shop I’ve used in the past and he liked the truck and the insurance company we saved the orangestorm! After not wanting to take the truck to college it sat in the garage a few years. One day opening the hood I thought how nice the new fender looked in the engine compartment as the entire truck had been Ziebarted in 82 when it was new. In an attempt to clean up the rest of the engine compartment I eventually took the entire truck apart to complete the task. One thing lead to another and before I knew, with a limited budget and doing a lot of the work myself and a body shop that worked with me for the paint work, I reassembled it. Replaced the inline six with a 350 small block that I built from two scrape core engines. When it was nearing completion my wife asked, “what are you going to do with it when your done?” I never gave it a thought I said. She came home one day from the grocery store with a flier for a car show at a local high school and said see what happens. So nervous as hell not knowing what I was getting into I’m in line with all these beautiful cars, not one truck and thought of my son on his first day at school with the truck, unknowingly what I must have put him through. Surprisingly I got a lot of complements which calmed me down and went home with a first place trophy. The following Monday in “what did you do over the weekend conversation” seeing my sun burnt face with the coworkers who first told me about the truck I showed them some pictures that were taken of the show and they encouraged me to enter it in the upcoming World of Wheels, back in 2005, so I did and I surprised myself with a second place win in my class but what was a bigger surprise I won the “Street Achievement for Trucks” awarded by GM Performance Parts show car series. Thrilled by both and with a little more confidence, a little confused, I made it a point to return the following year with a few improvements I got first in my class! We hit a lot of the local shows after that and taking it to the Woodward Dream Cruise which was a lot of fun. We take it out once in a while, having just under 56000 original miles on it. The last show was last year which we mostly do fundraising shows now, there was a local cable company selecting vehicles to do stories on and the Orangestorm that got laughed at all those years ago faired pretty well being called a “eye catcher” by the interviewer and I’m proud to have seen it in their youtube video![lmc_story_gallery]