How many people out there knew that there was a muscle car made by the General Motors sub-division GMC? The answer is not many and if you are one of those people staring at your screens right now with a puzzled look on your face, allow me to give you a history lesson on the 1971 GMC Sprint.

By the time the 1960′s came to a close the American muscle car market had been heavily saturated with two-ton, high octane cars with stratospheric horsepower numbers. Every brand out there was getting to dip their toes into the power pond, even little American Motors with their AMX and Rebel Machine got into the fray. But what about GMC? That branch of GM never really had anything to contribute to the muscle car market. That was until the year 1971. As if they had awaken from a decade long slumber, GMC decided to roll out their own muscle machine as the muscle car era effectively came to a close.

GMC chose the General Motors A-Body that was already shared by the Chevelle, Olds 4-4-2, Buick GS and Pontiac GTO as the basis for their vehicle. A solid 100% of the sheetmetal for the Sprint was borrowed from the Chevrolet El Camino because GMC sought to fill the void in their truck segment with a light duty truck-car that would still haul ass. In fact, the only difference that can be seen between the El Camino and the Sprint was the GMC badging on the grill, front quarter panels, steering wheel and wheel hubs. If you so desired, you could order a Sprint with any option already available on the El Camino. The Sprint even had a SP (Special Performance) package that was equivalent to the SS package on Chevy models, although it was never officially found in any GMC dealership brochure literature and few knew about it.

The Sprint could be had with a host of GM powerplants ranging from a lowly 6-cylinder all the way up the food chain of the V8′s. If you ordered the SP package, you could chose from a 350, 402 and 454 cubic inch V8 as your power package. That big 454 was of the LS5 variety and was machined with 8.5:1 compression (lowered compression was standard as the new decade progressed) and rated at 365 horsepower, not too shabby for a de-tuned version of what used to be a monster. Of the 5,536 GMC Sprints that were manufactured in 1971, only 25 had the 454 powerplant and as few as 16 are known to exist today, making it one of the rarest muscle cars to date.

Hope you all enjoyed a look at one of the least known muscle cars in history and come back for next Wendesday’s post.