In case you wanted an El Camino but just couldn’t abide Chevrolet emblems, GMC offered the essentially identical Sprint and Caballero.

With a touch of sarcasm, the legendary racer Smokey Yunick—a GMC truck dealer himself for many years—once wrote that GMC was the only vehicle with two complete teams of engineers: Chevrolet designed the trucks, and GMC designed the hub caps and ash trays. While his salty observation wasn’t technically accurate or literally true, necessarily, he did have a point. Many GMC light vehicles were unequivocal Chevrolet clones, differing only in the names on the trim pieces.

1971 GMC Sprint Custom

That was certainly the case with the GMC Sprint, introduced in 1971. It was a Chevrolet El Camino in every way but for the emblem on the grille and few other details. The hybrid coupe-pickup was available with the same mechanical hardware, too, from the 250 cubic-inch inline six to the 454 CID big-block V8, coupled to manual three and four-speed transmissions or the Turbo-Hydramatic.In one minor deviation, GMC named the V8 engines Invader instead of Turbo-Jet, Turbo-Fire, and so on in the Chevrolet custom.

1979 GMC Caballero 

As the El Camino and its General Motors A-body platform were redesigned for 1973,  then updated to quad-rectangular headlamps in 1976, the Sprint tagged right along. Likewise, when the A-body platform was downsized in 1978, the GMC pickup tracked in unison.

There were a few wrinkles. For example, while Chevy offered an SS model of the El Camino, GMC’s version was the SP with appropriate badging and graphics. (A 1973 GMC Sprint SP is shown in the lead photo above.) When Chevrolet introduced an upscale Black Knight trim package in 1978, GMC followed along with the Diablo, which sported flame graphics on the hood.

 1983 GMC Caballero 

With the downsized 1978 models, the Sprint was rebadged as the Caballero, a name previously used by GM on a Buick luxury station wagon. (See our feature on the ’57-58 Buick Caballero here) Here’s a coincidence: Tthe names of the El Camino, Caballero, and their hybrid pickup competiror, Ford’s Ranchero, are all of Spanish origin. And of course, the brand messaging  for all three shared a Southwestern flavor. Life imitated art, as in 1985 all El Camino and Caballero production was consolidated at GM’s Ramos Arizpe plant outside Monterrey, Mexico.

Sales of the Sprint aka Caballero never amounted to much. The best year was 1979 with almost 7,000 vehicles produced, while the worst was 1983 when a mere 2,126 Caballeros went out the door. But the badge-engineered pickup did pad El Camino’s modest production volume somewhat, and it gave GMC Truck and GMC-dual franchises an El Camino-style vehicle for their lots. In late 1987, the El Camino was discontinued and the Caballero with it. GM now offered both compact and full-sized pickups with all the comfort and features of a passenger car, and the era of the American coupe-pickup was ending.

1987 GMC Caballero