Is This the World’s Most Expensive Square-Body Chevy?

Ohio brothers Randy and Bradley Wilhelm were collectors: knives; flint arrowheads and spear points; tractors and farm equipment; boats; motorcycles; cars; felonies, you name it. They had a lot of guns, too, thousands of them, which was a problem. That Randy was a fugitive certainly didn’t help, and both brothers met their end after a nine-hour standoff with Knox County sheriff’s deputies in August 2022. 

On New Year’s Day 2023, Hoffman Auctions and Appraisals hosted the first of two sales in Mt. Vernon, Ohio, to settle the Wilhelm estate, and the docket included a 1970 Chevelle SS and Monte Carlo as well as 1988 and ’89 K5 Blazers, the last of which, an 18-miler still with its interior wrapped in plastic, sold for $125,000. It was later sold at Barrett-Jackson’s January 2024 Scottsdale auction for $154,000, with three extra miles on the clock.

Last March, Hoffman followed up with a second auction, which featured the rest of the brothers’ vehicles. Among them were twin 1988 SS Monte Carlos (a 29-miler at $39,000 and a 247-miler at $42,000), a 320-mile 1998 Suburban ($40,000), and a 42-mile 1998 Dodge Ram 2500 Laramie pickup ($26,001). It’s worth noting that all these listings also included a note about the odometer mileage not matching the mileage shown on each title, which ranged from higher to much higher, but examining the online photos reveals vehicles that sure do look spick-and-span brand new. Regardless, the stars of the sale were a pair of aptly nicknamed square-body Chevy trucks: a 21-mile 1989 K5 Blazer and a 44-mile 1987 V10 4×4 pickup (so called because of Chevy’s 1987 pickup truck nomenclature change from K to V, not because it had been fitted with a V-10 engine). The Blazer sold for $81,000, the pickup for $80,000. Big money.

To our knowledge, the Blazer hasn’t resurfaced, but December 27 on Bring a Trailer, the pickup sure did. Consigned by the dealer who bought it back in March and now showing 67 miles, it sold for $158,500, including fees—a record for a stock Chevy K/V series 4×4 pickup truck and a mighty return on an eight-month investment.

Names on the original paperwork included in the sale have been redacted in the accompanying photos, so we can’t say for certain the Wilhems were the original owners, though it’s likely, as the truck sold new at Bud Martin Chevrolet in their hometown of Mt. Vernon, for $16,912. Why they chose to pickle it, and all the other ordinary vehicles in their collection, is anyone’s guess. Because they could, maybe?

Five years ago, Sam Smith wrote a piece for Hagerty on this niche collector-car realm:
The wrapper-car phenomenon is not new. These machines have existed quietly on the fringes of the collector car world for decades, traded occasionally in public but far more often in private. The practice can seem mystifying—who would buy a car and not want to drive it at least once? Nor does it discriminate in age or spec. There live in this country quietly sleeping wrapper versions of base-spec, six-cylinder ’60s Mustangs, their interiors mummified and their seatbelts rolled up in original transport bags, but also first-generation Ford GTs in the wrapper, only 2 or 3 miles on the clock. Those six-cylinder Mustangs may be worth thousands less than you might guess, valuable only to a small group of people; those GTs almost certainly have far wider appeal, plus a market value five or six figures more than a nearly identical “driver” GT—one that might have a whopping 500 miles on the odometer.

Though it isn’t technically a “wrapper” car, not like the Barrett-Jackson Blazer was, who cares anyway?

Many people find it difficult to see the mindset of collectors who buy and then hide away new cars for decades, but it’s easier to understand which cars make good targets. More often than not (though not always), it’s the first or last of something, and generally that something is hot (though not always): Vipers, Corvettes, Mustangs and GTs, Ferraris. Tercels, Cavaliers, Sables, and 1987 Chevy pickups have never really been on that list, in other words.

This was the final year of the ½-ton body style that had been in production since 1973, and also the final year for a solid front axle in the ½-ton 4×4 pickup. It was the first year for throttle-body injection, too, but none of those are reasons to park it forever. Maybe the Wilhelm brothers were just nostalgic.

“I’ve always seen square bodies as work trucks,” says Brandan Gillogly, Hagerty Media’s resident Chevy truck enthusiast. “My dad used two of them, back-to-back, in his fence contracting business for many years. That’s making it hard to see one as a $159,000 collectible. On the other hand, because they were used extensively as work trucks, especially the vinyl-clad models like this one, it’s got to be the best-preserved square-body in existence when the rest are more likely to have rolled over their odometers over a time or two.”

Because there is something to be said for having the best of something—especially something you have a fondness for—after much back and forth in the final minutes of the auction, the winning bidder now owns a pristine, new old stock short-bed Chevy 4×4. It’s hard to imagine this thing ever seeing the road again, especially if reselling it down the line is in the cards. Trailering it to Cars & Coffee seems silly, or a hassle, or even reckless if maintaining the status quo is the goal. Congrats then, to Honcho71, for taking on this truck to keep safe.

Everyone wins here—but only one of us doubled his money in the process.