"The Last Truck" - Part I

As a certified documentary-nut, I needed no reminders to watch HBO's "The Last Truck" on Monday 9/7. The previous week's previews intrigued me because 1) I also happen to be a certified car nut, 2) Outsiders don't often get a chance to follow along as an assembly plant grinds to a halt, 3) I was interested to hear the stories of the plant's workers and 4) American cars have been an inextricable part of my personal automotive landscape for as far back as I can remember. Full disclosure: my father has worked for General Motors for over 30 years.

For those who may be unfamiliar, "The Last Truck" follows some of the workers at GM's now-defunct Moraine, OH assembly plant which produced the Chevrolet Trailblazer, GMC Envoy, and Saab 9-7x. Despite many of their tenures dating back to the plant's opening in 1981, the 2008 holiday season found those workers preparing for their careers at Moraine to follow "the last truck" down the assembly line.

The documentary made me reflect on how the general, and my personal, automotive landscape has changed over the last 28 years (I'm 30, but my first two years were spent learning to walk, talk, use the bathroom etc.). As a kid I remember wondering things like: why every car had "Body by Fisher" stamped in the doorsill, who the "Good Olds Guys" were, how they managed to get the GM logo on the metal seat belt buckle of every car we owned, if other people realized that Oldsmobile's roadside assistance number was 1-800-442-Olds and if the center high mount stop light on the '86 S-10 Blazer wasn't the coolest thing ever; the normal musings of a five year-old boy growing up in New York. The Grand National wasn't on my radar until I got older, but I remember the new Monte Carlo SS my father had as a company car when he married my stepmother in 1985, the other five Monte Carlos in my family over the years, the '85 Cutlass Salon with the "For Sale" sign in the window that later became my first car and my grandmother's Regal (the first of two) that later served as my backup car when my own '87 T-Type woke up on the wrong side of the garage in the morning.

From his teenage years on, my father has owned and driven a pretty impressive array of vehicles. But as he got older, Chevrolet Blazers began spending more time in his garage than any other model. Before the company put managers such as my father under the GM umbrella, he was specifically assigned to Chevrolet. He had a family, so the Blazer made perfect sense as a company car/weekend hauler. Somewhere along the way, it became an obsession. He's had S10 Blazers in the LT and Tahoe (when that was still a trimline) variety, and Trailblazers in 2-door, 4-door, LT, ZR2 and SS guise. If Chevrolet offered it, he ordered it. And when he moved under the GM umbrella, his world was briefly opened to the GMC Envoy. So it was with a half-smile and a heavy heart that I watched "The Last Truck".

My father drove Blazers because he liked them just that much. Not because of pricing or incentives, but because he genuinely believed that they were far better vehicles than any of their more in vogue competitors. That enthusiasm was not directed solely toward the Blazer. You couldn't tell my father that a '94 Supra was faster than his '94 Corvette, that a 5-liter Mustang with all the aftermarket trimmings could eat that same Corvette alive in a straight line, or that O.J. and A.C. wouldn't have gotten further if they were driving a white K5 Blazer instead of a Bronco. The Moraine employees showed that same enthusiasm toward the trucks they were building. It was sometimes laughable, but always admirable.

So as "the last truck", a white GMC Envoy, rolled down the assembly line, I couldn't help but draw parallels between the story of Moraine and the story of my father's automotive tastes....