How to Make a Modern Overlander from a 1959 Chevrolet Apache Pickup

If you’ve ever said, “they don’t make ’em like they used to,” this one’s for you. Spiritually, this is a new 1959 Chevrolet 3600 3/4-ton truck. Technologically, it’s all 21st century. Aesthetically, it walks the line. At a glance, you’d take this for a genuine 1950s-vintage 4×4. Get up close and you realize that it’s actually brand new and loaded with luxuries that even Fifties passenger-car consumers would never have conceived. This truck is retro, virtually none of it is vintage, and yet it has all the visual appeal of a classic car—something almost never found in the world of street rodding. It didn’t come easy, but it’s a pilot build for a whole series to come of retro overlanders using bodies designed for classic trucks and a throwback aesthetic to match them. 

Overlanding is a self-contained car-camping experience that can take you far off the beaten path. The journey itself is often the primary goal. It requires some kind of all-terrain vehicle like a truck, SUV, or motorcycle. At its best, overlanding combines camping with exploration and adventure. Overlanders carry all their necessary supplies with them, including food, water, and camping gear, to be self-sufficient for extended periods. The focus of overlanding is on visiting inaccessible, often off-the-grid locations, and on enjoying the journey rather than just reaching a destination. Even the late-model trucks and SUVs typically used for overlanding are often modified to handle rough terrain. For those who insist on a bit of style with their adventure, there’s a growing segment of vintage-based overland builds. 

When Del Uschenko, proprietor of Delmo New Vintage 4×4 and owner of the 1959 Chevrolet Apache you see here, was a teenager back in the late 1980s, he saw a lot of the 1955-’59 Chevrolet “Task Force” series trucks, or as they were known from 1958-on, the Apache, Viking, and Spartan models. The Apache name adorned the light-duty (1/2-ton through 1-ton) vehicles, and it has become shorthand for the entire four-headlamp era of the 1955-’59 generation pickup. 

“I didn’t have one in high school, but it seemed like I was always working on them.” Del says. “They’re so great looking, but they’re still affordable. I thought that the ’59 would appeal to the crowd.”  

The Task Force/Apache trucks are well supported too. If the bellwether of a healthy restoration-parts market is brand-new sheetmetal, then fans of the Task Force trucks can take heart: The cab of this truck is fresh sheetmetal from Premier Street Rods of Lake Havasu City, Arizona. It and the customized original box were finished by the Lewis Milinich Body Shop in Hanford, California, in what Del describes as “1963 Corvette gold” finish and can only be 1961-’63 Chevrolet Fawn Beige. Even in color choice, there’s a reverence all throughout for mid-Century Chevrolet design and period accessories. 

As Del puts it, “a theme throughout our whole career” has been to build “in homage to what the factory did.” Subconsciously, a late 1950s pickup truck in an early 1960s color might tune into the public’s collective psyche for mid-century Americana, as filtered through countless mid-Century sitcoms rerun on 1990s cable television. Or it might just be a great-looking combination even setting aside Kodachrome nostalgia and/or historical connotations. It’s not your neighbor’s Silverado, that’s for sure. 

Del likes the Apache pickup design so well that he’s built many for customers in the intervening decades, all in two-wheel-drive form until now. The off-road market has been mostly late-model focused until lately, but Del and his design consultant Eric Black, of E. Black Design Co., saw an opportunity where vintage cool meets outdoor luxury 

No matter if it’s Chevrolet, GMC, Ford, Dodge, or International Harvester, late-1950s 4×4 trucks of any make are scarce and best preserved in stock form. The first factory-built Chevrolet 4×4 trucks started coming off assembly lines during the 1958 model year. Even then, Chevrolet workers were installing parts from aftermarket vendor NAPCO. Before that, NAPCO had upfitted those same parts in its own facilities, in what it called a “Powr Pak” conversion. NAPCO began converting GMC trucks starting in 1956 and Chevrolets beginning in 1957. 

NAPCO even performed conversions on the Chevrolet Suburban. Arguably, the Chevrolet and GMC Suburbans were little more than truck-based, all-metal, two-door station wagons until joined with four-wheel drive. That front differential is what puts the “sport” in “sport utility vehicle.” 

Back in the Eighties, most of the Fifties refugees Del saw were old farm and ranch trucks, and he came to appreciate their style and design. He was especially impressed with the occasional NAPCO he encountered.  

“That’s what really turned me onto these,” Del says of the Apache as a basis for his first 4×4 project. “I’ve always been a huge fan of NAPCO.” 

Encounters with original 4×4 Apaches would have been relatively infrequent back then, because the Powr Pak installation back in the Fifties essentially doubled the purchase price of the pickup truck. These days, respect for surviving and restored originals is such that you’d never put one in much peril. Plus, they’re a truly vintage experience as far as creature comforts are concerned—limiting their appeal both then and now to only those seeking (or paid to endure) what Theodore Roosevelt called “the strenuous life.” Enter Delmo with the New Vintage 4×4, which aims to provide the same flavor in a more luxurious setting.  

Eric and Del conceived the idea to build a series of retro off roaders “forever ago” as Del puts it, starting in 2021 and completing this truck two years later. That’s “a year for chassis and a year for paint,” Del says. He also believes that future efforts will go quicker thanks to working the kinks out with what was essentially a preproduction model. He’s hoping to produce a few trucks in this vein each year “on spec” to sell to customers with vintage tastes and an adventurous streak. There are two 1968 Fords underway as this is written.  

With the New Vintage Apache, the NAPCO look is there, but that rugged chassis is entirely new: You can buy an identical one through The Roadster Shop. The RS4 chassis, as it’s called, comes standard with such niceties as a Currie “Rock Jock” high-pinion axles (Dana 60-style in the rear, Dana 44 in front, both with limited-slip differentials and a virtually unlimited selection of available gearings—our feature truck has a 4.10:1 ratio) and Fox Racing coil-over shock absorbers tuned with the intent of splitting the difference between on-road ride quality and off-road performance. In theory, this 1959 Chevrolet can navigate some serious obstacles—it’s set up to offer 10 to 12 inches of suspension travel.  

Bump steer is a frequent complaint whenever solid-axle front suspensions are raised or lowered. The Roadster Shop chassis comes with extra ride height compared with late-model four-wheel-drives, already dialed into the steering linkage layout. It also comes with a couple options for massive (11- or 13-inch rotors) disc brakes. On a stock 1959 Apache, 12 x 2-inch drums were standard. The new disc brakes would not clear an unmodified 1959-correct 17.5- or 19.5-inch steel wheel. That’s why Delmo took the extra step of machining a set of 18-inch wheels patterned off the originals and shod, period-style, in STA Super Traxion STA 7.50 x 18 bias-ply tires. Yes, bias plies have some disadvantages over radials, even off road, but Del says he thinks it’s “worth the look.”  

The factory frame rails on a ’59 Apache were 6.10 inches deep and 2.25 inches wide made of 0.19-inch C-channel spaced 34 inches apart, while the RS4 chassis uses 5-inch x 2.5-inch rails, 0.188-inch thick and using wider-than-factory spacing to accommodate modern powertrains. Into that space, Delmo installed an LS-series crate engine, matching powertrains with untold numbers of reliable trail rigs of the present day. Before installation, the LS3-spec engine was gone through in-house and treated to new camshafts for a boost over the 6.2-liter V-8’s factory 430-hp rating.  

Massive, modern power notwithstanding, the Fifties aesthetic continues under the hood, where functional components like the air box and valve covers were restyled to mimic their vintage equivalents. The result certainly seems like it could have come off the designers’ boards at Chevrolet in the 1950s, had the engineers asked them to style a 525-hp 376-cu.in. LS3 V-8 instead of a 135-hp 235-cu.in. Thriftmaster straight six, or 160-hp 283-cu.in. Trademaster V-8.  

Similarly, while the transmission choices of 1958 may have included the four-speed Hydra-Matic automatic, those were radically different from the computer-controlled four-speed 4L80E, built by Hughes Performance of Phoenix, Arizona, now resident behind the LS3. The torque-converter-equipped 4L80E’s 2.48:1 1st gear is equivalent to the old Hydro’s 2.63:1 second; likewise with second in the 4L80E and third in the Hydra-Matic: 1.48 vs 1.45. Fourth gear in the original Hydra-Matic was always 1:1, while direct drive in the 4L80E is third gear and its fourth is 0.75:1, providing a 25-percent overdrive—those 4.10s will behave like 3.08s in top gear. 

Realistically, the transmission typically seen in an original 1958 4×4 was the Muncie SM 420 four-speed manual, which has radically steep 7.05:1 first and 3.57:1 second gears, a 1.70:1 third gear and is direct drive in fourth. Both NAPCO Powr-Pak and Chevrolet 4×4 builds used the original two-wheel-drive transmission in combination with a divorced Dana 23 transfer case, while the RS4 chassis come standard with Advance Adapters’ Atlas billet two-speed model, which Del refers to as “the mack-daddy” of transfer cases.  

The 4L80E is shifted via a column shifter behind a 15-inch replica of the original steering wheel and the Atlas is controlled by twin sticks protruding from the floor, one for engaging and disengaging the front axle, the other for selecting between high and low ranges in the transfer case. 

The total effect here is admittedly overkill. It’s an off-road truck that is not only nicer than any 1958 Apache that ever rolled off the Chevrolet line but probably beyond even any Impala of that year. It’s designed to showcase absolutely everything you can do with one of these trucks and to serve as a showcase for Delmo New Vintage 4×4’s offerings as they construct more. As such, it’s never been off road. 

“It’s yet to be tested,” is how Del puts it, but there’s every reason to believe it when he says it will do anything you’d ask a new truck to do in an overlanding or other off-road situation. It will just look way better doing it. Del has put 350 street miles on it, so far, and says it’s every bit as competent as any new truck in that setting. 

“I certainly hope these aren’t all garage queens,” he says. “I hope they get used.” The thrill of driving one of these (or even riding along, as we can attest from photography) can’t be beat. 

“You get that happiness feeling of driving a classic,” his how Del puts it, but when you want to do the off-the-grid adventure stuff, “you have that confidence.” 

Essentially the only major 1959-vintage component in this build is the Fleetside box, a fruit of Del’s years’ long habit of scavenging every piece of rust-free Apache sheetmetal he can find. The Fleetside was Chevrolet’s steel-sided replacement for the fiberglass Cameo Carrier of 1955-’58.  

To perfect the never-was vintage look of a New Vintage 4×4, Eric and Del tweaked the bed length to one never offered by Chevrolet in 1959. The bed was cut down to fall directly between the factory long- and short-bed lengths. The factory offered Stepside and Fleetside boxes in 6 ½-foot and 8-foot lengths. The custom “medium” length is 7 ½ feet. A custom-length Trail Cap was fabricated to match.  

Trail Cap Premium Camper Shells are another Eric Black brainchild. What appears, even on pretty close inspection, to be original riveted aluminum camper hatches are in fact brand-new, riveted aluminum camper hatches. The effect is super convincing, down to the etched brass badges. Only once the modern Go-Fast Campers two-person, pop-up tent is erected does it become clear that, like the truck, this is a 21st century project continuing directly on the work of mid-century designers and craftsmen. 

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