The GMC Motorhome Had An Oil Dipstick About As Long As My Mom Is Tall

There are a few vehicles that seem to come up over and over amongst the Autopian staff, cars that always manage to catch our attention and distract us from whatever we’re trying to do. Cars like, let’s see – and of course these sometimes are more keyed to one write or another – Citroën SMs, Toyota Centurys, Yugos, BMW i3, Smart Roadsters, and so on. One of the perpetual, guanteed-to-get-everyone-excited vehicles, though, is the GMC Motorhome.

Incredibly, the GMC Motorhome seems to be the one vehicle our snooty British designer Adrian seems to share un-ironic esteem for along with all of us other drooling simpletons. And it’s easy to understand why! These things were cool as hell, and pushed the design and construction of motorhomes so far and into such a better path that, of course, like all GM great ideas, they eventually gave up on it and let it become a dead end. Another triumph, GM!

Still, we love them. And it’s easy to understand why: full aluminum/fiberglass body shaped like a land-zeppelin, a FWD drivetrain module from the Toronado, ’70s-tastic interiors – it has it all.

Here, take a half hour to watch this orientation video from 1973 or so, just in case you fall into a time-swamp and emerge in the 1970s and need to get a job at your local GMC dealership.

Okay, but let’s get to the one stupid point of this whole post, which, I promise you, is fairly stupid but in a fascinating way. Look at these diagrams of the GMC Motorhome:

Okay, see where that Toronado V8 engine sits in what GM called the Unitized Power Package? It’s kind of just over the front axle there. Now, because it’s underfloor, it’d not easy to get to, so for routine maintenance stuff, GM thoughtfully provided some access panels in the front to access things like washer fluid, brake fluid, and, yes, oil, to both fill and check.

Gmcmotorhome Underhood So just look a bit at the distance between the front of the Motorhome and where the engine actually is in that little cutaway up above. Now look at this:

Here’s a GIF excerpted from the video:

Gmc Motorhome Dipstick
Hot mangoes that’s a long dipstick! That thing just kept coming out, like a chain of brightly colored handkerchiefs coming from a birthday clown’s pocket moments before some kid nails him right in the crotch with a plastic whiffle bat, earning him the biggest laughs of the day.

It seems that dipstick is 54.25 inches long, which is longer than my mother is tall, or at least right about the same height, about four and a half feet tall. We’re shtetl hobbits, remember. Anyway, there’s something just fascinating about a dipstick that long, I think. You’re on one end, and the oil is a zipcode or two away, and the amazing thing is that for certain delivery vehicles, this is entirely normal.

Look, here’s a 55 inch dipstick that fits a Chevy P30 Step Van, perhaps one of the most common delivery box vans around. I’m so used to my small car engines with their sub-one-foot dipsticks, these all seem absurd and hilarious to me. I thought this may be just some private affectation, but there are forums of people discussing unusually long dipsticks they’ve encountered, usually on RVs. One poster claims to have had an eight-foot-long one!

I suppose the ultimate in long oil dipsticks has to come from the world of large-scale ocean liner engines and large oil tanks, which use special tools called “oil-gauging tape measures.” Here’s one: