Since I do appraisals at Gunner’s great Garage I have to keep up with trends and know what’s hot in the collector car marketplace. It seems to me that Chevy’s El Camino is a model catching on these days.

Not long ago our Coffee Clutchers breakfast group visited a nearby car collector’s garage. Among the vehicles there was a red El Caminp with a black vinyl top.

A few weeks later I hosted the monthly meeting of the Waupaca County ABATE motorcycle group at 3Gs. One ABATE member wanted to purchase some vintage stainless steel headers we had in the showroom. He wanted to use them on the El Camino he was building.

Even more recently a man was doing some remodeling at the garage when a Manawa resident came in looking to get an appraisal. The car he wanted to have appraised was a mid-’60s El Camino — the early Chevelle ”square” type. The man doing the remodeling referred the visitor to me and we talked about doing the appraisal in the spring, when he took the El Camino out of storage.

After the El Camino owner left, the other man continued work on installing a new door. When he was done, I went in to pay him and he started talking about his “hot rod.” When I asked him what it was, he said it was an El Camino. And he hadn’t heard that the earlier visitor had one, too.

Having just bought a new Ford truck for business, I’m wondering if maybe I should have invested in a classic Chevelle instead. After all, it’s nice to catch collector car trends on the upswing.