Today a couple of my colleagues were that the late 1970s to mid 1980s Ford F-Series was a remarkably good-looking truck, better than most people think of it. And that’s true, but it did make me wonder what the best-looking truck actually is. Like, the best ever.

For me, the platonic truck is the C/K Chevy, and because I am insufferable, I have a very specific C/K that always comes to mind. The C/K was in production through most of the 1970s and 1980s, with a changeover as the decades switched. Picking a preference is a challenge. The 1970s C/Ks look ineffably more like classic cars. The 1980s C/Ks look impossibly square, almost cartoonishly so.

But there were changeover years! From 1979 sort of through 1981, the trucks transitioned to the new squaredom. My favorites are the 1980s that have the 1970s-style surfacing but with big-headlight square fronts. They’re blocky, without being so absolutely slabby as the later years. (.)

Some of my appreciation for these things may stem from my friend living in one, a shortie with a stepside and a camper cover, parked in his grandma’s driveway for a spell. That truck isn’t pictured here, though I did find another one quite similar parked in one of the more interesting neighborhoods of my hometown a few years back.

It’s weird. I loved the Chevy trucks for so many years, seeing them as a kind of pickup ideal. But it’s those changeover C/Ks that have grown on me, stern and simple.