The Chevrolet El Camino SS Choo Choo package earned its odd nickname somewhere along the way, and by 1987, the very last year Chevrolet built an El Camino at all, buyers had one final chance to check that option box. Only 861 of these were built in that final model year, out of roughly 4,950 total across the package’s entire run. Here is what made this quirky appearance package a genuine send-off for one of Chevrolet’s most unusual nameplates.
From 1983 until ’87 the El Camino SS could have the “Choo Choo” appearance pack, increasing the aerodynamics of the vehicle, a take on a package offered on the Monte Carlo SS. The optional package had 4,950 takers over the entire production run and there were only 861 units produced in 1987. The model here does not have the molded side skirts included in the package, but when installed they could hold a side mounted exhaust system. Under the hood is a 305 CID (5.0 L) engine backed by a 3-speed automatic transmission.
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Chevrolet’s Weirdest Named Option Package
Some option packages get a boring corporate name and nobody remembers them. Others get called Choo Choo, and decades later people are still asking why. Chevrolet’s El Camino SS could be optioned with exactly that appearance package in its final years of production, and 1987 turned out to be the very last chance anyone ever had to order one, because 1987 was also the last year Chevrolet built an El Camino at all. This particular truck that is not quite a truck comes from that final model year, one of a genuinely small number of Choo Choo-equipped El Caminos built before the whole platform disappeared forever. Where did a muscle-truck option package even get a nickname like that?
A Small-Block Farewell Wrapped in a Weird Name
As the story generally goes, the Choo Choo nickname traces back to the package’s distinctive front-end graphics and styling cues, which struck people as resembling a locomotive more than a passenger car, and the name simply stuck. This example does not carry the molded side skirts that some Choo Choo cars wore, but the rest of the package’s identity comes through under the hood, where a 305 cubic inch small-block V8 does the work. By the mid-1980s GM’s muscle-adjacent lineup had downsized considerably from the big-inch era, but a V8-powered El Camino with a genuinely unusual appearance package still carried real character compared to everything else in the showroom.
The Very Last Year, and Only 861 Built
1987 was the final model year for the entire El Camino nameplate, closing out nearly three decades of Chevrolet building a car and a truck in the same body. Only 861 Choo Choo-package El Caminos were built in that final year, out of roughly 4,950 built across the option’s entire run from the early 1980s onward. That combination, the rarest possible option package in the rarest possible model year, makes a 1987 Choo Choo El Camino a genuine double-scarcity piece, one of the more unusual ways to close out a nameplate that never had a direct successor.
A White El Camino With a Story to Tell
This particular Choo Choo-era El Camino wears clean white paint with bold ‘El Camino SS’ graphics along the bedsides, a factory-style appearance treatment Chevrolet leaned on heavily in the G-body’s final years to keep the model feeling distinct on dealer lots. White was a common and popular choice for these cars, since it showed off the black lower body cladding and SS-specific decals to good effect, and a well-preserved example in this condition is increasingly hard to find given how many G-body El Caminos were used as actual work trucks and driven into the ground.
The G-Body Platform’s Long Goodbye
The El Camino rode on GM’s G-body platform through its entire final decade of production, the same underpinnings shared with the Monte Carlo, Malibu, and Cutlass Supreme. By the mid-1980s, GM was gradually retiring rear-wheel-drive G-body cars across the board in favor of front-wheel-drive replacements, and the El Camino’s discontinuation in 1987 was part of that broader platform sunset rather than a decision made in isolation. That context matters, because it means the Choo Choo package’s disappearance wasn’t really about the El Camino specifically losing favor, but about an entire generation of GM rear-drive cars reaching the end of their planned lifecycle together.
A Truck Bed That Never Quite Left Car Culture
The El Camino’s whole appeal always rested on a contradiction: a genuine cargo bed bolted to a passenger-car chassis, giving buyers hauling capability without giving up car-like ride and handling. That format never fully caught on the way traditional pickups did, but it built a devoted following precisely because it split the difference so well. Modern car-based utility vehicles occasionally get compared to the El Camino concept, but nothing since has quite replicated the specific formula of a genuine mid-size car platform wearing a real truck bed.
Why Final-Year Cars Carry Extra Weight
Being the last model year for any nameplate tends to add a layer of significance collectors respond to, and the El Camino is no exception. A 1987 example, especially one carrying the rare Choo Choo option, represents the literal end of a nameplate that ran continuously (with one mid-1960s interruption) from 1959 all the way to this final year. That kind of bookend status, combined with genuine option-package rarity, is exactly the kind of story that pulls a car out of the realm of ‘just an old El Camino’ and into genuine collector territory.
GMC’s Twin Wore the Same Farewell
Chevrolet was not the only General Motors division saying goodbye to a car-based pickup in 1987 — GMC’s own rebadged version, the Caballero, was discontinued in that same model year, riding the identical G-body platform and facing the identical market pressures. The two nameplates had run in parallel for decades, and their shared final year is a reminder that this entire car-truck concept, not just the El Camino name specifically, was being retired by General Motors as a whole rather than singled out for cancellation on its own.
Why Nobody Ever Really Replaced It
In the decades since 1987, no major American manufacturer has brought a genuine car-based pickup back to market in anything close to the El Camino’s original form, leaving the format as a genuine one-off chapter in automotive history rather than an ongoing category. That absence of a true successor is part of why surviving examples, especially rare option packages like the Choo Choo, continue to draw steady collector interest rather than fading into the background the way some more common orphaned nameplates eventually do.
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