At the conclusion of the torture test, the vehicle from the joint venture of General Motors and Grumman — called the Long Life Vehicle, or LLV — was crowned the winner. An initial order for 99,150 of the Long Life Vehicles was placed, at a price of $11,651 per unit.
For its part, GM provided the chassis, which was based on the first-generation S-10 compact pickup truck, as well as a four-cylinder engine — initially, the same “Iron Duke” as the Pontiac Fiero — mated to a three-speed automatic transmission. Most of the heavy lifting was done by Grumman, which provided the coachwork and built the LLVs at its factory in Pennsylvania.
As the first production LLV started to hit the streets in 1987, a few shortcomings were immediately apparent. Since the LLV’s boxy cargo area was windowless, poor visibility for the driver was a concern, as was the vehicle’s low ride height, which was prone to getting stuck in heavy snow and required tire chains in those conditions. During hot weather, mail carriers had to make do with a simple dashboard-mounted fan because the LLVs lacked air conditioning.
Still, the LLV was an enormous success overall. With the final units rolling off the assembly line in 1994, that makes even the most recent examples a whopping 30 years old, and they’re still transporting our online purchases, greeting cards, and unfortunately, bills to pay.
[Featured image by IFCAR via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | Public Domain]
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