INSPIRED BY A LEGEND
Calgarian’s meeting with Barris spurs full customization of his 1977 Jimmy
In 1996 Dave Clayton bought a GMC Jimmy.
It had been lowered several inches and was powered by a Corvette L82 engine, but Clayton had plans to go further with the custom touches.
It was also the year Clayton, a Calgary-based automotive detailer with his own shop, Personal Touch Car Care, met George Barris.
Known as the King of the Kustomizers, Barris was responsible for creating iconic television vehicles such as the Munster Koach and Batmobile.
“Barris and the Batmobile were going to be at the World of Wheels,” Clayton recalls.
“I reached out to his car handler and asked if I could detail the Batmobile, and was told no. But on the Friday night of the show, I met Barris and asked him directly if I could detail his car, and he said yes.
“He wrote on the back of one of one of his business cards, ‘It’s OK for Dave to detail my Batmobile’, and that was it.”
The pair hit it off, and as Clayton was detailing the Batmobile, he and Barris began talking about the GMC Jimmy project.
That was all the inspiration Clayton needed to start thinking about building something a bit more radical. Chevrolet introduced the Blazer in 1969, and GMC followed with its sibling, the upscale Jimmy in 1970. These were full-sized, truckbased utility vehicles, and were built to compete with the Ford Bronco and International Scout. Most often, Blazers and Jimmys were equipped with fourwheel drive, so the two-wheel drive 1977 GMC Jimmy Clayton bought is something of a rarity.
“I’ve never liked the name Jimmy, so we call it a Blazer, even though it’s not the Chevy version,” Clayton says.
“My wife Lori and I bought it, and she drove it to work for a while. It looked good. It was lowered, had nice wheels and was painted black.
“But after meeting Barris, who is a childhood hero of mine, we decided to go full custom.”
As purchased, the Blazer had been properly lowered with dropped spindles up front and arced springs in the rear, so Clayton left the suspension alone. The Corvette powertrain was refreshed with ported heads, higher compression pistons and a lumpier cam.
Clayton focused the bulk of his attention on modifying the body, and enlisted Chris Heighton of Heighton’s Restorations in Beiseker to help.
One of the most notable of the 11 major body modifications is the removable roof. In 1977, the Jimmy/Blazer trucks had only a partially removable roof. That was a style change from the earlier generation where the entire roof from the windshield back could be taken off for an opentop experience.
Clayton found a roof from a 1973 Blazer, and Heighton adapted it to the 1977 truck.
The windshield was laid back, or raked, 114 mm. Doing this ultimately gave the truck a 140-mm chopped top.
The vent windows in the doors were deleted, and all door and tailgate handles shaved, while rear view mirrors from a 1990 Chevy 454 SS truck were added.
Complex alterations were made front and back. A 1967 Chevrolet truck front end was grafted onto the 1977 fenders and hood. Most people, Clayton says, would have simply hung the 1967 sheet metal on the 1977 chassis, but Heighton cut apart the fenders and hood and seamlessly joined everything together, extending the overall length of the truck by 180 mm.
A 1990 GMC truck front bumper was heavily modified to fit, and Derek Pauletto built the aluminum grille, with all of its angles and compound curves, when he was working at AeroTech Specialty Welding.
“I didn’t leave him the truck, so we measured everything up and drew a diagram. I had it back in three days,” Clayton says.
“When I picked it up, it fit like a glove. That was impressive.”
Pauletto now runs his own shop, Trillion Industries in Calgary.
At the back, the frame rails were shortened by 254 mm and the gas tank moved ahead and up so a custom roll pan — fabricated to accept 1980 Trans Am tail lights, inverted and swapped side for side — could be welded in place. Heighton laid down intricate old-school flames over the Ford Thistle Purple paint and Gary Miller added hand-painted vivid blue pinstripes around the flames.
In addition to all of the exterior alterations, the interior was upholstered in subtle grey tweed by Cascade Interiors.
After finishing the Blazer, Clayton showed it to Barris at a World of Wheels event.
Clayton says: “He walked around it twice, taking in all of the details, and then paid me the highest compliment when he said, ‘You guys nailed it on the head.’ ”