AutoHunter Spotlight: 1980 GMC K2500 Wideside 4×4

Featured on AutoHunter, the online auction platform driven by ClassicCars.com, is this 1980 GMC K2500 Wideside 4×4.

The collector community surrounding classic General Motors pickups uses a special vocabulary of its own. Knowing the distinction between a fleetside, wideside, stepside, and fenderside will give you an added bit of intellect the next time you see one of these trucks on display. This two-tone K2500 is the perfect truck to introduce us to the nomenclature. It went through a frame-off restoration and is a turn-key driver that would be equally at home at a cars and coffee event as it would at the lumber yard. The truck is being offered by a dealer in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and the auction ends Tuesday.

Although General Motors marketed this generation of trucks as the “Rounded Line,” they were also known as “square body” trucks. Round lines and squares seem like two different things to me, but in this case, they are talking about the same vehicle. This body style marked the third generation of the C/K Series of pickups – the “C” designation aligning with two-wheel-drive trucks, and the “K” moniker being attached to the four-wheel-drive versions. The design lasted from 1973 through 1991 in the United States.

Another phase sometimes mentioned in the context of these trucks is “wideside.” This didn’t necessarily have to do with a widened frame or track, but rather was a classification for the bed layout. A flat-sided truck went by “fleetside” in the Chevrolet lineup and “wideside” in the GMC lineup. The alternate style was “stepside” (under Chevrolet) and “fenderside” (under GMC). I’m going to commit this to knowledge to memory, because I’m pretty sure I have mistakenly called a GMC a stepside before in prior stories.

More about today’s feature four-wheel-drive truck, according to the listing: In was restored inside-and-out in 2017 and was resprayed in the current two-tone blue and white theme. The Sierra Grande-trimmed interior of the cab shares the same motif, courtesy of a blue cloth and vinyl bench seat along with matching carpeting and door panel trim. The odometer reads just 83,681 miles, but since it is a five-digit readout, true mileage is not known.

Motivating this workhorse is a 350cid small-block V8 mated to a TH350 three-speed automatic transmission. The dealer says that recent mechanical work included replacement of the fuel tank, brakes, and exhaust system. This truck is ready to roll. If you have been eyeballing the market for square body trucks, you already know how tough it is to find one that hasn’t been worked to death.