Back in 1972, Steve McQueen divorced his wife Neile Adams, and sold their home and other items, including his car collection. Among those was this undeniably butch Chevy truck, and it must've been miserable to put it up for sale. But now, you can skip the 40-year distance between these events, bridge the gap between the years and buy it for yourself, as it's no ordinary Chevy truck.
The builder of this truck was Vic Hickey, a prominent figure in Baja Motorsports. It is noted to be Chevrolet's first full-size 4x4 Baja 1000 truck, and it's comprised of a C10 chassis with a C30 one-ton cab and a 400 Turbo transmission. It debuted in the 1968 Baja 100 and raced in the 1969 Las Vegas Mint 400 and the 1970 Baja 500, winning Riverside in 1970. In 1970 McQueen bought a bunch of racing cars from GM, and this was one of them. The stickers are now repro, but the patina’d paint on it is original, and the truck features a number of period improvements as well as updates done along the way. The seats are Corvette buckets and the tires Goodyear R3 A/T tires on 16" wheels. Under the hood is a rebuilt 350 with a Quadrajet.
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What did happen to the Chevy back in 1972? Well, McQueen sold it to a Vic Hickey employee, and the truck spent many years as a farm vehicle in Alturas, California. It is noted to have only 14,000 miles on its odometer, but if those are racing and farm miles, they're going to be tough ones. Not that the Chevy wasn't a tough beast to begin with.
The Chevrolet will be auctioned by Mecum at the Santa Monica 2013 sale on Friday, July 26th.