CUCV, is that you?
With my current location just an hour or so from Camp Shelby, where almost every National Guard mechanized unit in the southeast has stomped through the pine thickets since the 1960s, lots of DRMO’d surplus gear and vehicles are common. I give you, a very sweet mid-1980s Chevrolet K5 Blazer in its M1009 CUCV guise, found at a local bookstore.
These pop up a lot along with their M1008 1/2-ton Silverado cousins. GM produced some 70,000 CUCVs from 1983 to 1986 and they served on active duty through the 1990s in just about every utilitarian role needed across the Army:
There is just so much Reagan military goodness here. From the high color woodland scheme to the BDUs, M1 helmets and M60 “pig” set up like a technical. Note the MILES gear as well.
You still see a slim few in the Guard. For instance, I bumped into an immaculately maintained example belonging to a tank company while I was up supporting FEMA operations in Smithville after the terrible tornadoes in the area in 2011:
While these have typically all been put to pasture by Uncle, you can be sure civilian-owned specimens will continue to circle the globe for another century or so.