These days, any full-size pickup truck you buy is going to be perfectly suitable for daily driving. Even if you have no use for the Toyota Tundra’s payload and towing capability, you can still basically use it like an oversized car without hating your life, but that wasn’t always the case. Trucks used to be basic work vehicles with minimal creature comforts. That doesn’t mean that Chevrolet wasn’t proud of the suspension in its 1972 pickup trucks, though. That suspension was a revelation!
So how did Chevrolet decide to showcase the smooth ride offered in its pickup trucks? The only way anyone should advertise their suspension’s smoothness — It bolted a seat to the front wheel of one of its trucks, strapped a dummy into said seat, bolted a second seat to the exterior of the cab and had a test rider sit in the second seat. That way, you can see how the truck’s suspension absorbs road impacts.
The result is this hilarious clip that starts at about the 7:15 mark in the video below. Chevrolet didn’t bring out any of the competition so that we could see the differences in how a Ford or Dodge would compare when tested with a similar setup, so it’s not exactly scientific. Still, you can’t pretend like that visual doesn’t do an incredible job of highlighting exactly what Chevrolet wanted to highlight.
Sure, it’s a ridiculous test that no one’s ever going to replicate in real life, but when it comes to pickup trucks from 1972, we’re all in. If the 1972 Chevrolet wasn’t the best full-size pickup truck from that year, then show us a sales training video that proves another truck is superior. No, seriously. If there’s one thing we love here at Jalopnik, it’s vintage sales training videos. The more the better.