It's no news to GM truck enthusiasts that the medium-duty Chevrolet and GMCs have long used the cabs, interiors and body contours of the light-duty trucks, just with different front sheetmetal (or, in latter years, fiberglass). For decades now, truck modders have exploited that fact to build all sorts of strange what-if mashups of civilian and commercial trucks: beasts that GM never would have dreamed of assembling in those bygone pre-SUV days but which would fit right in with today's massive near-semi-height heavy-duty rigs.

Despite my affinity for smaller vehicles, I'd do something similar with this 1970 Chevrolet C/40 moving van.

I'm not necessarily interested in creating a lifted behemoth to tower over traffic as I go to the grocery store for a gallon of milk. That's not an image I care to project. Nor am I eager to stuff a diesel in it, bolt up a set of Alcoas with six-inch spike lug nut covers, and go around pretending I'm a trucker. If I wanted to live out that fantasy, I'd have gone to truck driving school.

Instead, I just love that homely ol' face. I'm a sucker for box-that-it-came-in styling. It's simple and unpretentious; it was probably inexpensive to produce; it's form taking a big back seat to function; but it also shares a design language with the light-duty trucks of that era, which had handsomeness to spare. Perhaps because of the bare-bones style without too many angles or compound curves or gimmicks, the design has aged well. It's not ugly, it's just plain. And I'd like to apply that design to a more daily driveable light-duty format.

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