Grandpa's Six-Cylinder C10 Is Now Goodguys' Truck of the Year, With 650 Supercharged HP

Thomas Dickerson's grandfather bought a new 1967 Chevy C10 in Crawford, Georgia, and it was as plain as a pickup got: inline six, three on the tree and not much else. As Fuel Curve's Dave Doucette reported, the truck worked for decades, logged more than 300,000 miles and a couple of engine rebuilds, and then got parked.

Now it has a supercharged LT4, a 10-speed automatic and an electric bed floor, and Goodguys has named it the 2026 Dakota Digital Truck of the Year (Late). Fuel Curve covered the win on Oct. 9, and THE SHOP listed it on Oct. 13 among the final six winners of the Goodguys Top 12 of the Year.

A shop built on a Mustang, a truck built for the shop

After high school Dickerson went to tech school in nearby Athens to learn paint and body work, with a goal of building a 1967 Shelby Mustang. Fuel Curve says that Mustang was honored at the 2021 SEMA Show around the same time he opened his own business, Thomas Performance Engineering.

Reviving the C10 was partly a family project and partly a calling card. Dickerson decided to do almost every part of the build himself, which turns the truck into a rolling portfolio for the shop. Most of the original truck was too far gone, so the finished C10 mixes restored factory pieces with aftermarket and handmade parts.

Metalwork everywhere you look

Dickerson did all the body modifications. Panel gaps were tightened, the front clip was custom made, and the engine bay got a new firewall, inner fenders and core support panels. The front and rear glass were flush mounted. The bed was reworked with an electric opening floor and custom toolbox compartments, the tailgate was heavily massaged, and a custom rear roll pan carries machined exhaust tips. It all went under custom BASF Glasurit metallic blue.

The bed floor is the party trick. In Fuel Curve's photos, the wood floor lifts to show off the rear suspension and exhaust underneath, finished in bronze to match the engine. It is a show feature, but it is also the kind of metalwork a body man builds to prove a point.

650 hp and 10 speeds

The six cylinder is long gone. The truck now runs a supercharged Chevrolet Performance 6.2-liter LT4 rated at 650 hp and 650 lb-ft. Ultimate Headers feed three-inch Borla pipes and mufflers, and a GM 10L90 10-speed automatic sits behind it, shifted by a reworked ZL1 Camaro shifter. Not bad for a truck whose original job was hauling around Crawford.

Under it is an Art Morrison GT Sport chassis with 14-inch Wilwood disc brakes. Forgeline GA3C wheels, 20x10 in front and 20x12 in the rear, wear Michelin tires, and the truck sits low over them.

Brown leather and machined metal

Dickerson did the interior himself with help from Built by Ricky upholstery. The gauge panel is custom machined and holds Dakota Digital HDX gauges. TMI Pro Classic seats are covered in brown Apex leather and split by a custom center console, and a Sparc Truss wheel sits on an Ididit tilt column. The brown against the blue paint keeps it warm instead of clinical, which suits a truck with this much family history.

Already a winner, and staying home

This is not the C10's first big trophy. According to Fuel Curve, it won the Young Gun award at the 2025 SEMA Show, along with several other significant awards. Truck of the Year (Late) puts it in the Goodguys Top 12, a group that THE SHOP says will be displayed together at the Speedway Motors Southwest Nationals in Scottsdale, Arizona, Nov. 20 to 22.

The company it keeps says a lot about the year. THE SHOP's list of the final six Top 12 winners puts Dickerson's C10 alongside Tony Jurado's 1956 Ford F100 from South City Rod and Custom (Truck of the Year Early), Taylor Yeager's 1937 Lincoln Zephyr from Hot Rods & Hobbies (Custom of the Year), Doyle and Karen Thomas's 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Brougham from Rutterz Rodz (Custom Rod of the Year), Phil Mitchell's 1969 Yenko Nova restored by Level One Restoration (Muscle Car of the Year) and Greg Heinrich's Ironworks-built 1987 Chevy crew cab (4x4 of the Year). Two of the six are pickups and a third is a lifted truck, which tells you where a lot of the high-end building energy is right now.

Whatever else it wins, the truck is not going anywhere. "The truck has been in our family since 1967 and will probably always be in our family," Dickerson told Fuel Curve. His grandfather liked things simple and liked them to work. The truck is far from simple now, but it still works, and it is still theirs.