Everyone knows how hot today's market is for 1973-1987 Chevy trucks. While the 1960-1972 trucks became classics almost immediately, the 1973-1987 trucks were upright, blocky and took some time to gain acceptance in the collector vehicle world. However, watch any weekend auction’s results for a clean example of the breed and you’ll see that these trucks are now trading for what used to be unheard-of sums of money, easily on-par with older generations of GM trucks. Not just collectors items, enthusiasts have especially taken to the square GM trucks in recent years, making a good 1973-1987 Chevrolet or GMC a white-hot commodity when it comes to raw hot-rodding material.

Detroit Speed has long been known for building fantastic suspension parts, and, jaw-dropping complete cars. With an eye on superior handling– derived on an OE engineering background–Detroit speed uses as much modern technology as possible, and aims primarily at Pro Touring and racing categories. Detroit Speed President Kyle Tucker recognized that he was missing a huge market, with no product offering for squarebody trucks. Turning his engineers loose, Detroit Speed has been hard at work crafting industry-leading parts that will give a squarebody the ability to corner-carve in a way that GM engineers would have never dared to dream of back in the day.

According to Tucker, “Other suspension companies have been in this market a long time, but they generally used car parts or designs for the trucks. I wanted to create truck parts to be used on trucks, so that's what we did, and continue to do.” Tucker’s background is that of a Midwest kid surrounded by racing, driving a variety of stock cars, midgets and a few sprint cars in his home state of Missouri. After a sprint car crash that really rung his bell, he took the advice of his car owner to keep racing but to have a backup plan. That led him to engineering school, which led to a job at GM on the engineering team doing a lot of chassis and suspension design, and driving test vehicles. “I learned a lot,” he said, “I helped put a prototype of the C5 Corvette through the testing regimen and saw that car all the way through to production.” In addition to engineering portions of the car, his driving talent also had him putting the car through the paces on GM’s Milford Proving Grounds, “So I went from racing on dirt to pavement,” he said.

General Motors is where he met and worked with Pro Touring hero Mark Stielow and they became friends, even building a few cars together in their garages at night. They both used as many new OE technical ideas and parts on cars in the original days, with Stielow and Tucker building a selection of mostly 1969 Camaros, each one better and faster than the one before.

For Stielow, this experience led to a series of successful racing vehicles and the acquisition of the “Mr. Pro Touring” nickname, but for Kyle it led to business. In early 2001 Detroit Speed started in Kyle’s backyard garage. and now, twenty years later, the company has relocated to Mooresville NC, but is still cranking out a long line of top-notch suspension parts, not just Camaros, but also Mustangs, trucks and more!

“I grew up in the racing world, where you had to prove yourself with everything, and that’s the general philosophy at Detroit Speed—there’s no compromise," said Kyle.

Detroit Speed’s front and rear suspension kits, as well as upgrade parts, are available at www.detroitspeed.com and are ready to ship. Read on to see a peek of what is available: