1968 Chevrolet El Camino SS 396: The Only Year the Pickup Had Its Own Series

For 1968 Chevrolet gave its car-based pickup something it had not had before and would not have again: its own Super Sport model number. ChevelleStuff's production table lists the SS 396 series in three bodies, the sport coupe 13837, the convertible 13867 and, new that year, a two-door sedan pickup numbered 13880. Its identification guide puts the point plainly: in 1968 the SS 396 series was extended to the El Camino, and it turned out to be the only year the El Camino received its own SS 396 series. Chevrolet built 5,190 of them, every one a V8.^1,2,3

The two years before show how deliberate the change was. For 1966 and 1967 ChevelleStuff's production tables list the SS 396 series in only two bodies, the sport coupe and the convertible, while the El Camino appears solely in the lower and Malibu trim levels with six-cylinder and V8 model numbers. In those years, on the evidence of the production tables, there was no Super Sport El Camino to order. The 1968 table is the first in which the pickup sits inside the SS 396 series itself, with its own line and its own count.^4,5,1

Being a series rather than an option mattered. From 1966 through 1968 the SS 396 was a separate series from the Malibu, and for 1968 that status covered the pickup as well. ChevelleStuff's SS 396 page says the model number was 13880 and that the VIN begins with the same digits, so a factory SS 396 El Camino announces itself in its identity number rather than in trim that can be bolted on later. That is a rare gift in muscle-car authentication. From 1969 onward, as the later years show, a Super Sport El Camino has to be proved from option records instead.^2,3,2

The series defined its equipment around a big-block. According to ChevelleStuff's SS 396 page, the 396 Mark IV engine was the base engine, in 325-horsepower L35 form, and the series carried a blacked-out grille, Super Sport trim, a special SS 396 hood with simulated twin scoops, and SS 396 emblems. The same page is candid about what the base car lacked. A front bench seat, a heavy-duty three-speed manual transmission and an instrument panel with no gauges beyond the speedometer and fuel gauge were standard. Every SS 396 had a 12-bolt rear axle, but an open differential unless the buyer paid for Positraction.³

The published ratings put the pickup squarely among the performance cars. Chevrolet's gross figures, as ChevelleStuff tabulates them, give the L35 396 325 horsepower at 4,800 rpm and 410 lb-ft at 3,200. Above it sat the L34 at 350 horsepower at 5,200 rpm and 415 lb-ft at 3,400, and the L78 at 375 horsepower at 5,600 rpm and 415 lb-ft at 3,600. The option report counts 12,481 L34s at $105.35 and 4,751 L78s at $237.00, across the whole line. It does not divide them by body, so the number of L34 or L78 pickups is unknown, and no estimate is drawn by assuming the pickups followed the coupes. Across all 62,785 SS 396s, the L78's 4,751 installations amount to fewer than one car in thirteen, which is as close as the records come to describing the top-engine pickup.^1,1

The transmission counts sharpen the picture of how SS 396s were ordered, even if they cannot isolate the pickups. Turbo Hydra-Matic, listed as an SS 396-only option at $237.00, went into 21,539 cars, about a third of the 62,785 SS 396s built. The heavy-duty close-ratio M22 four-speed, also SS 396-only and also $237.00, went into just 1,049. Wide- and close-ratio M20 and M21 four-speeds appear on 38,933 and 11,208 cars across the whole Chevelle line. How those gearboxes divided between pickups and coupes remains unpublished.^1,1

Set against its siblings, the SS pickup was a minority inside a minority. The 5,190 SS 396 El Caminos were 8.3 percent of the 62,785 SS 396s built. The same table lists 55,309 SS 396 sport coupes and only 2,286 convertibles, so the pickup outsold the SS 396 convertible by more than two to one. Inside the El Camino range, the 5,190 SS 396s stood beside 26,690 V8 and 1,072 six-cylinder Malibu El Caminos and 6,082 V8 and 2,757 six-cylinder Chevelle 300 Deluxe El Caminos. ChevelleStuff reminds readers that the El Camino is a body style, not a series; 1968 is the one year that rule bent.¹

The numbers also carry their own limits. ChevelleStuff's series table leaves out Canadian production, which it reports at 26,118 units for the year, though a separate note records 328 Malibu El Caminos produced for sale in Canada. The option counts come, by the site's account, from Chevrolet's year-specific Accumulative Production and Final Model Year reports, and it warns that option quantities and prices vary from resource to resource. The 5,190 figure is therefore a reported count from a careful secondary tabulation of Chevrolet records, not a registry of surviving trucks, and it is the right number to quote with that label attached.¹

The broader order book shows the market the SS pickup was sold into. Across all 1968 Chevelles, Positraction appears on 60,283 cars at $42.15, front disc brakes on 12,835 at $100.10, and the U14 special instrumentation on 19,393 at $94.80. Powerglide went into 334,061 cars. Those are line-wide figures that include every body and series, so they say nothing specific about El Caminos. What they do show is that disc brakes and full gauges were specialist choices in 1968, and that an SS 396 buyer who wanted either had to ask for it.^1,3

The distinction lasted one season. For 1969 Chevrolet ended the SS 396 series and made Super Sport RPO Z25 equipment, orderable on the V8 Malibu El Camino among other models, and ChevelleStuff reports 86,307 Z25 installations with no El Camino split. For 1970 the tabulation again counts Z25 and Z15 packages across the Malibu sport coupe, convertible and El Camino without dividing them by body. From then on a Super Sport pickup's identity lives in option records, and its production disappears into combined totals. Among the SS 396 years, 1968 is the one in which the El Camino's count stands on its own: 5,190. That makes the 1968 SS 396 El Camino the easiest Super Sport pickup of the era to prove and one of the few whose rarity can be stated with a factory-derived number rather than a guess, which is reason enough to treat the figure, and the 13880 model number behind it, with care.^2,6,7,1