60-66 Suburban Development/Concept Photos

[hewittca]

I am continuing my way through the design and development of GM trucks and trying to fill in photo sets for each pickup variant from every generation of C series trucks, which brings me to my next post for the 60-66 Suburbans. This will be Part 3 from the full 60-66 Development/Concept Photo set that I have.

Part 3, Suburbans and Panels

GM completed the initial design of the next generation '60 pickups in May '58, at which time they switch focus to the pickup variants including the GMC and Suburban. The GMC cosmetics were developed for 6 months after completion of the overall pickup architecture. Following the GMC development, GM focused on the Suburban which is were this post begins.

-January 1959
With the overall shape of the truck complete, GM focused mainly on the roof/panel and trim design for the Suburbans. As you can see, the design was essentially set with this model and no further major changes would be made in design.









-January 1960
By early '60, GM was already designing a refreshed hood for the full line of trucks. They utilized the Suburban model to test hood variations along with the pickup model shown in the pickup photo set.






-April 1960
By April '60, the new hood design was finalized but they were still experimenting with grill options.



-July 1960
In July, they were displaying proposed trim options for the '62 model year.




-September 1960
More trim options for '62





-November 1960
GM was still experimenting with GMC trim options late in '60.







March 1961
By this time, GM was still trying out trim options for the '62 model year. This interesting wood grain option was badged Regatta.






At this point, development on Suburban specific features ceased for the 60-66 Suburbans, and year to year updates would carry over from the pickups. It is interesting to see how many trim options GM proposed for the '62 model year right before development stopped. As with many other designs found in all the photo sets, it's also interesting to see how much effort was put into proposing new styling features when more often than not GM chose to leave trim unchanged and grills only modestly updated.

[MusicMan70]

This is Awesome; Especially the GMC stuff! Thanks for posting this up.

[Llay R. Rac]

I love this stuff....Thanks alot!

[sam512bb]

Good day hewittca,

Indeed, thank you for posting such fantastic and rare photos! If I may ask, where did you find such amazing photos?

Cheers,

Sam

[hewittca]

Originally Posted by sam512bb

Good day hewittca,

Indeed, thank you for posting such fantastic and rare photos! If I may ask, where did you find such amazing photos?

Cheers,

Sam

Hi Sam, the GM Heritage Center manages all historical content. They have photos for some popular models on their website, but most models are archived. The great thing is, though, that if you just e-mail and ask they will find and send you any releasable photos for free! That's all I did here.

[blown240]

This is one of the coolest threads Ive seen in a while!

I would love to recreate the 2tone paint scene on my 61.

[VictoriaHardware]

Thanks for posting all of these great photos. Pure gold!

They were all taken at the GM Tech Center in Warren, Michigan. Much of that has not changed since then. These are recent Google Map images. The indoor shots were in the Design building in the lower right. The outdoor shots were in the courtyard just to the west. The three turntables are still there and clearly visible. The Styling Dome just to the north is seen in many shots.

[argonaut]

This is a really neat post! Thanks!