Highlander Paint

[special-K]

I know it was a long time ago when I owned my first 67-72. It was a '72 shortbed I bought off the OK Used Car lot in '73. I liked these trucks since they first came out when I was a 12 year old building model kits. I didn't know all the different details like we do now that they are older. I didn't know all the different badges,which year they called them what,or what came with what. They were just good looking trucks and some were fancier than others. I never knew what a Highlander was until 1986 when I almost bought one that was listed in Hemmings Motor News and I looked at it. I even remembered that one wrongly as being a "Holiday" package,not Highlander. But,that was when I knew that's what I had back in 73-75 because my truck had plaid seats just like that one.
It wasn't until really getting into the nitty gritty,reading brochures and discussions on this site,that I realized just exactly what came with the Highlander packages. I could have sworn my truck was solid paint Ochre and after learning more about the package I doubted my memory...even wondered if I did paint work. That's pretty bad when you can't remember a thing like that. I always thought my memory was pretty darn good but have experienced,both personally and in others,how you can have something a certain way in your mind (right or wrong) for long enough and you have it there as fact. But,I remember that thing being all yellow with a plaid seat and Parchment interior. I also have it in my mind it was a 3spd,for that matter. I know of a few other exceptions to the rule on other 67-72s I've known over the years,like a '68 4wd Stepside with a 9' bed or my 4spd Highlander K/20,that I never bring up because I can't prove it with pictures. No,I never saw a 427 or Corvette option,just a few other exceptions to the rule.
Right now there's a truck on Ebay that is the topic of another thread. I believe it is 100% original and is the first (other than mine) Highlander I have seen with solid paint. The Highlander was the first of what is now the industry standard in packaging. You get the savings by getting a group of options with no exception. I figure in '72 since this was the first of that,yet still in a time the factory made exceptions and allowed all sorts of individual options combined,they must have allowed exceptions in the Highlander package...as long as you paid for it. Maybe,since the Highlander package was supposedly an end of design attempt to empty out the stock,Chevrolet did even more to get them cleared out. Like allow variations on this package.
Here's that Ebay Highlander:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/1972-...item43a5dc8864