Which Years Did America Get The Chevy S-10, And How Much Is One Worth Today?

Look in your rearview mirror, and chances are good you'll see a pickup truck if you're on the road in the United States. The top three sellers in the U.S. last year were all domestically made trucks and accounted for more than 1.5 million units sold. No. 2 on the list was the Chevy Silverado, one of the spiritual successors to the compact S-10, a popular compact pickup that enjoyed a 22-year production run and spawned a SUV variant, the S-10 Blazer. The Silverado is now available as a battery electric vehicle — a technology that was on the fringe when the S-10 was in its prime. A 2025 Silverado EV will set you back more than $57,095, but how does that compare to the value of a vintage S-10 today?

The S-10 hit the U.S. market with the 1982 model year and hung around until 2004, when the midsized Colorado took its place. The Colorado got a redesign in 2023, and our Cherise Threewitt praised the it's aggressive, boxy design and rich feature set in her review. The base price of $29,800 for the 2024 Colorado in WT trim is still enough to put at least a couple of S-10s in your garage, though. Classic.com lists the average sale price for an S-10 pickup at $12,704 over the last five years, with more than a half dozen changing hands for under $5,000.

[Featured image by IFCAR via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | Public Domain]

S-10s are relatively plentiful on the secondhand market, too, with more than 150 examples changing hands over that five-year span. The cheapest was a high-mileage 1997 extended cab with a camper shell that went for just $2,500, and the most expensive was a pristine short-bed 1989 example with Chevy's popular 350-cubic-inch V8 that sold at auction last year for just over $30,000.

That's more than six times the average retail value of $4,450 for a 1989 S-10 cited by J.D. Power, and that premium may have to do with its 300-horsepower engine. That was a significant upgrade from the stock offerings that year, which started with a 2.5-liter four-banger that produced 92 horses and maxed out with a 4.3-liter (262-cubic-inch) V6 that made only 160 horsepower. If you can manage to flip it for anything close to that top-end number, picking up a $3,000-$5,000 S-10 and dropping in a crate 350 V8 from the likes of BluePrint Engines from retailers such as Summit Racing could be a good investment.

[Featured image by IFCAR via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | Public Domain]