Chevrolet C/10 1965 “Boosted Bertha”

A stock 1965 C10 could be ordered with a modest six-cylinder or a brand-new 327 V8, riding on a suspension design that was still fairly new to Chevy trucks. Bertha, slammed and supercharged, is a very different animal from what left the factory that year. Here’s what the factory version actually offered, and how far a build like this has pushed past it.

A Supercharged .. Slammed to the ground C/10 .. You’re going to love this one .. Check it out!!

The truck that rolled off Chevrolet‘s line in 1965 and the one sitting in front of you now share a chassis code and not much else. Bertha wears a supercharger, sits slammed to the pavement, and clearly wasn’t built to haul lumber on weekends. But underneath the attitude, this is still a 1965 C10 — a truck that, in stock form, offered buyers a choice between a workhorse six-cylinder and one of Chevy‘s first small-block V8 options in a light truck. So what did Chevrolet actually build that year, and how much of it survives under all the modifications?

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What Chevy Actually Sold in 1965

The base 1965 C10 came with a 230 cubic-inch inline six making around 165 horsepower, but that was also the year Chevy expanded V8 availability, adding a 327 cubic-inch small block alongside the existing 283 as options. Buyers could also order a three-speed manual with an overdrive option, nicknamed “three-on-the-tree” for its column-mounted shifter.

From Farm Truck to Boosted Build

1965 mattered structurally, too — Chevy extended the wheelbase to 115 inches and stretched the bed-to-cab dimension by five inches, while carrying over the coil-spring front suspension introduced in 1963, a setup that made these trucks noticeably more nimble than the leaf-sprung competition. Standard features even included four-way flashers, self-canceling turn signals, and tilt steering, upscale touches for a working truck.

A fully restored, stock 1965 C10 can bring $50,000 or more from collectors today, but builds like Bertha take a different path entirely — trading factory ride height and a naturally aspirated small block for a slammed stance and forced induction. Either direction proves the same point: the 1965 C10’s coil-spring chassis and small-block architecture gave builders a genuinely strong foundation to work from, whether they wanted to restore it or radically rework it.

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