‘Trucks and Jeeps’: 1365 Posts
Norman Bel Geddes’s teardrop car model. Photo by A. Van Dyke.
Norman Bel Geddes didn’t design a single vehicle that entered production. He didn’t hold down any job with an automaker for more than a few years, and in fact, he much preferred designing theater sets over designing anything else, cars included. Yet he proved immeasurably influential to automotive and transportation design, warranting a new exhibit that traces his career and legacy.
Much like a couple of his contemporaries, Buckminster Fuller and Frank Lloyd Wright, Norman Bel Geddes envisioned not just snippets of potential futures, but an overarching and unified future where architecture and planned communities integrated with industrial design and transportation. He began to express those ideas in 1927 when, after finding success at stage design and after finding the boxy cars and trucks of the day disappointing, he designed a number of futuristic vehicles, some of the earliest ones to apply engineers’ ideas on streamlining to car bodies here in the States, leading many to label Bel Geddes as the father of the term “streamlining.”
(We should note here that others – most notably Paul Jaray, Edmund Rumpler, and Dennis Burney – had explored streamlining as it applies to automobiles before Bel Geddes, but it was Bel Geddes’s long and flowing lines that brought an aesthetic sense to the field and that set the mold for futuristic car designs for the next few decades.)
As Michael Lamm wrote in Special Interest Autos #40, May-July 1977, those automotive designs caught the attention of Graham-Paige’s Ray Graham, who hired Bel Geddes the following year as a styling consultant and tasked him with designing the Graham-Paige of 1933 and working backwards from that design year by year to allow the company to incrementally work toward Bel Geddes’s radical designs. The onset of the Depression the following year would derail those grand plans, but Bel Geddes stayed on with Graham-Paige until Ray Graham’s death in 1932.
Bel Geddes followed that stint with his 1932 book Horizons, in which he articulated his ideas on automobile design, arguing that engines should drive the car from the rear, that drivers should sit up front and center for a commanding view of the road, and that automobiles should ride on six or eight wheels instead of four, echoing Milton O. Reeves‘s assertions of a couple of decades prior. Along with the book, he built another set of models, which this time caught the attention of Walter P. Chrysler, who in 1933 invited Bel Geddes to submit some proposals for a compact car and some improvements and spin-offs of the Chrysler Airflow.
He followed that contract with work for Autocar (focused on making the company’s trucks look more powerful) and Texaco (designing the Doodlebug Diamond T fuel oil delivery trucks) before approaching Shell in 1937 with a plan to develop his vision for a city of the future, which used superhighways to keep traffic moving through and above cities. While Shell funded Bel Geddes’s model for an advertising campaign, he nevertheless approached General Motors with it, convincing Alfred Sloan to let him develop it for GM’s pavilion at the upcoming 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair.
Though it ended up costing GM $7 million – or as much as $237 million in today’s dollars – the resulting Futurama exhibit proved a hit for GM, with lines snaking around the building waiting for a chance to see Bel Geddes’s elaborately executed vision for the cities and highways of 1960. The layout encompassed an entire acre and included half a million individual buildings, a million individual trees of 13 species, 50,000 cars (all, naturally, rear-engined streamliners with a multitude of wheels), and a 14-lane interstate highway that separated traffic out according to speed and destination while at the same time accommodating urban pedestrian traffic. As Adnan Morshed of the National Air and Space Museum wrote in The Aesthetics of Ascension in Norman Bel Geddes’s Futurama:
the Futurama aspired to be the culmination of early-twentieth-century urbanist thinking. (It) prophesied an American utopia regulated by an assortment of cutting-edge technologies: remote-controlled multilane highways, power plants, farms for artificially produced crops, rooftop platforms for individual flying machines and autogyros, and various gadgets, all of which were intended to create an idea built environment and, ultimately, to reform society.
Visitors sat on a conveyor belt and looked down on the spectacle from above, taking an 18-minute narrated tour as if they flew above the landscape. The end of the tour then dropped them off at a full-scale street intersection as envisioned by Bel Geddes, complete with passenger flyovers and GM cars and trucks comprising the “traffic” below. Tens of thousands of visitors took in Bel Geddes’s Futurama every day – estimates range from about 10 million to 25 million overall – making it the fair’s most visited attraction.
“Futurama’s giant model of America in 1960, complete with glass-clad skyscrapers and multilevel superhighways, gave Depression-era Americans genuine hope for a better future within their lifetimes,” Donald Albrecht wrote in Norman Bel Geddes Designs America. “It was Geddes, more than any designer of his era, who created and promoted a dynamic vision of the future with an image that was streamlined, technocratic, and optimistic. Today, as seen in the ‘retro-futurist’ looks of theme parks, animated television programs, and popular novels, Geddes’s vision of the future continues to shape and inspire the twenty-first-century American imagination.”
One would have thought that Bel Geddes would have parlayed such a success into a career in automotive or transportation design, but apart from a two-year contract for Nash, a 1940 design for a streamlined tank, and an assignment to design delivery and sales trucks for IBM, Bel Geddes remained largely involved in theater set design until his death in 1958.
Today, Bel Geddes’s archives reside at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, which in the fall of 2012 assembled about 200 of Bel Geddes’s drawings, models, photographs, and films for I Have Seen the Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America, an exhibit that, according to the Harry Ransom Center’s blog, “highlights Bel Geddes’s creativity and desire to transform American society through design.” The exhibit then traveled to the Museum of the City of New York from last October through this February and has now gone to the Wolfsonian at Florida International University in Miami Beach.
“Geddes was both a visionary and a pragmatist who had a significant role in shaping not only modern America, but also the nation’s image of itself as leading the way into the future,” Albrecht wrote. “Underlying Geddes’s amazing array of efforts were themes that can be traced throughout his career: his commitments to the power of unfettered imagination and the primacy of the individual, his fascination with nature as a model for imitation, and his belief in the possibility of a utopian future. And Geddes’s showmanship became his trademark.”
I Have Seen the Future will run through September 28 at the Wolfsonian. For more information, visit Wolfsonian.org.
Given the pop-top and the camper fittings on the side, one would figure this 1971 Dodge B200 Tradesman for sale on Hemmings.com would feature more interior amenities – at least a sink, an electric converter, and some cabinets, maybe even a mini-fridge – but the lack of such equipment just means the van’s that much more open to customizing. Just about everything else to it – down to the linoleum on the floor and the matching Coleman cooler – looks either stock or period correct. From the seller’s description:
318 V8, automatic, power steering, power brakes, air conditioning, pop-top roof, dining table & bed – Bone Stock & Original – Converted by the Northwest Travel Equipment in 1970 – Original Paint – Runs & Drives Great
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
See more Dodge trucks for sale on Hemmings.com.
Photos courtesy VanDerBrink Auctions.
One of the biggest single stories of last year in the world of historic cars came when VanDerBrink Auctions sold off the contents of the tiny Nebraska dealership, Lambrecht Chevrolet. Remember, this was the sale where some of the Chevrolets had never been titled and, in several cases, had authentic single-digit odometer readings.
VanDerBrink is at it again, having a similar sale scheduled for September 6 in the small city of Grant, Nebraska, in the southwestern quadrant of the state. It will liquidate the remaining holdings of Bullock Chevrolet, which dated to 1947 in Grant, the seat of Perkins County. The dealership was run by a family with deep roots in the dual worlds of cars and aircraft. The patriarch, Wayne, ran his own airline in the 1930s and brother Noel E. was a barnstorming race driver who won the Pikes Peak Hillclimb in 1922 before being killed in a plane crash. Wayne built the Grant dealership after having sold General Motors cars in Omaha despite being too young to officially hold a franchise.
A third generation of Bullocks continued on after the dealership ended its GM franchise in 2002. The sale will auction more than 200 cars, ranging from projects to restored cars, the latter category including a 1935 Chevrolet three-window coupe and a 1948 Chevrolet 3100 Advance Design pickup. A restored 1937 Diamond T Model 80 truck is also among the lots, as are countless NOS parts, signs and a restored fuel pump. The full list of lots and more information are at VanDerBrinkAuctions.com.
Photos by the author.
While the doghouse covers come off and show a few tarted-up small-block V-8s among the sea of six-cylinders between the front bucket seats, nobody really seems to care much about engines at a custom van show. After all, vans typically don’t go fast or hug corners like most hot rods and sports cars. Instead, some of the most stunning displays of creativity and craftsmanship become apparent only when the owners of the vans throw open their gullwing, Dutch, and barn doors for inspection.
If anything characterizes a custom van besides porthole windows, murals and mag wheels, it’s the van’s interior, as we learned this past weekend at the 42nd National Truck-In this past weekend at the Washington County Fairgrounds in Greenwich, New York. Not only did the interiors we see typically follow a specific and unique theme – we saw the gamut from “hunter’s cabin” to “pirate ship” to one based entirely on goats – they also displayed copious amounts of creativity and craftsmanship, all the while squeezing in a bed and other amenities for both style and comfort. Some of the interiors dated back to the 1970s, some represented the life’s work of the van’s original owner, while others were customized more recently. All of them showed a passion for vanning that has, to many, become a lifestyle.
We’ll explore that culture of custom vanning in a future article, but for now, let’s take a look at some of those custom interiors after the jump.
Believe it or not, there was a time when every light truck built didn’t have four-wheel drive. In the days following World War II, General Motors didn’t even offer a factory built four-wheel-drive light truck. Instead GM relied on a small vendor called NAPCO or Northwestern Auto Parts Company to give its trucks the all-road and off-road capability needed to compete with the likes of Willys products and Dodge Power Wagons. Studebaker also used NAPCO conversions as did Ford. NAPCO’s ingenious Powr-Pak 4 x 4 conversion allowed a mechanic to transform a two-wheel-drive GM truck into a four-wheel-drive in just a few hours with no welding and minimal cutting needed. The front drive axle in the kit was fitted with tubes modified for constant velocity joints thus allowing the wheels to steer. The transfer case was a divorced unit, driven via a shaft off the transmission. NAPCO conversions date at least as far back as the Advance Design series light trucks, but prior to 1955, only one ton and three-quarter ton GM light trucks could be converted. GM’s 1947-1955 half-ton trucks used a torque-tube style driveshaft that wasn’t easily adapted to a transfer case. Once the torque tube was eliminated in the second-series 1955 trucks, it was possible to use NAPCO conversion kits on half-tons. NAPCO conversions were originally performed by Chevrolet dealers or NAPCO franchises. Starting in 1957, Powr Pak 4×4 was offered as a factory installed option on Chevrolets while GMC offered it from the factory in 1956. This continued until the introduction of the redesigned 1960 trucks when GM used its own four-wheel-drive system on light trucks. On GM factory-built NAPCO 4x4s, you won’t find any NAPCO badges on the exterior. However, you should find NAPCO cast into the front axle. This NAPCO-converted 1956 Chevrolet 3100 for sale on Hemmings.com is an shining example of the breed, restored, it appears to concours condition. From the seller’s description:
1/2 Ton Shortbed Big Back Window with the extremely rare Napco 4-wheel drive. The truck went through a 100 percent complete frame-off restoration. All original drivetrain was rebuilt. Has deluxe heater, original radio, day/night mirror, 16″ Rims.
Location: scottsdale, Arizona
See more Chevrolet trucks for sale on Hemmings.com.
As owners will remember, there was nothing luxurious about the FJ40 series Toyota Land Cruiser. Built for function over form or comfort, these utilitarian off-road vehicles were noisy and punishing to drive on road and possessed a thirst for gasoline most often associated with muscle cars. Those flaws aside, FJ40s were capable off-road and reliable enough to provide owners with decades worth of service (at least until the tin worm attacked in earnest). This 1982 Toyota FJ40 Land Cruiser for sale on Hemmings.com will need a bit of rust remediation and perhaps a fresh coat of paint (on the hood and gas cap door, anyway), but it’s presented as a one-owner truck complete with its original (and rare) air conditioning and power steering. From the seller’s description:
Runs perfectly has it did the day it was purchased. Everything works, lights, fans, switches ect…..
Original Owner, Original Title, Original Window Sticker, Original Dealer Receipt of Payment, Original Toyota AM/FM Cassette, Original Owners Manual, Original Paint, Original Power Steering, Original Air Condition, Original Catalytic Converter and exhaust
Rumor has it that only 300 FJ”s entered the US in 1982 which was the end of the legacy. To have a truck like this in this condition is remarkable. This truck has never been apart at all. Top has never been removed. The amount of trucks that had factory air along with factory power steering was a handful. The body and frame are rust free! Dealer sticker is still on the rear door sill.
From the pictures you can tell the paint has faded off the hood. From stone chips over the last 32 years the front of the hood (rust) needs to be addressed. Also, the gas door paint is off as well from keys rubbing while locking and unlocking the fuel door. I did not want to have anything repainted. It is too easy to assume something was being hidden. There are no surprises here. This is a very rare opportunity to own an original condition example of the rarest FJ40 model in existence. There are a many that have been “restored” and put back together, but they are only original once!
Remember this is not a show truck, this is a well preserved 32 year old Toyota.
Location: Fenton, Michigan
Status: No Longer Available
Find more Toyotas for sale on Hemmings.com.
1972 Plymouth Duster 1973 Dodge Dart Sport 340. Photos courtesy Kustom King unless otherwise noted.
Murray King’s cabinet making business took him from one coast of Canada to the other, and rather than return to Spruce Grove, Alberta, with empty trailers, King began filling them up with interesting and derelict cars he found in his travels. Before long, his focus shifted from woodworking to metal working, and Kustom King automotive restorations was born. Now, after four decades of buying cars, King will sell the 550 cars in his collection (combined with another 87 cars from A-Riverside, his neighbor’s business) in a two-day auction set to begin on Saturday, August 16.
Most auctions of this scope focus on a single brand, but King’s collection is far more diverse than that. Chevrolets make up the largest percentage of his collection, with 141 Bowties from 1932 through 1977 set to cross the block, but Ford isn’t too far behind. The blue oval brand is represented by 106 vehicles, dating from 1928 through 1969, and other makes include Pontiac (70 cars, from 1937-’72), Buick (50 cars, from 1941-’72), Mercury (39 cars, from 1950-’68), Oldsmobile (36 cars, from 1935-’70), Cadillac (24 cars, from 1951-’64), Lincoln (15 cars, from 1954-’62), Dodge (14 cars, from 1937-’74), Chrysler (12 cars, from 1941-’62), Plymouth (11 cars, from 1932-’73), and GMC (four trucks, from 1941-’81).
Lumped into an “Other” category are brands like Essex, Fiat, De Soto, Packard, Fargo, REO, Willys, Hillman, Studebaker, Austin, Morris, Nash, Rambler, Mercedes and Nissan. Though this phrase is used a bit too much, the Kustom King sale really will offer something for everyone.
And then there’s the inventory of A-Riverside Auto Enterprises, located across the road from Kustom King. Though focused primarily on trucks, the 87 offerings from A-Riverside will also include both domestic and foreign automobiles from the 1940s through 2001. Still, truck collectors will want to take heed, as the lots are set to include everything from a 1929 Standard REO SpeedWagon Coca-Cola delivery truck through a 1997 GMC 3500HD, with a wide variety of heavy-duty inventory to choose from.
Though Kustom King is selling off its used car inventory, the shop (which specializes in restorations and custom builds) isn’t going away. In fact, King advises that with Alberta’s current oil boom, business has never been better, as mechanics from the oil fields have plenty of discretionary income to spend on custom cars.
Though the shop once built rods and customs to sell at auctions in the United States, back when the street rod market was strong and the Canadian dollar was weak, the days of building cars on speculation are over. As King put it, “There’s too much risk and too little profit” in trying to anticipate what buyers will fight over at auction.
1969 Ford Mustang convertible.
Kustom King also houses So-Cal Speed Shop Canada, as King cut a deal with Pete Chapouris in 2008 to become the exclusive Canadian distributor for So-Cal Speed Shop products. Ultimately, that means the 550 cars on his 5.5-acre property are more of a distraction than a necessity because King doesn’t part them out to the general public. Now that he’s past the seven decade mark in age, King has also come to the realization that he won’t live long enough to see them all restored.
A few of the vehicles in the Kustom King inventory.
When asked, “Why sell the collection now?” King’s response was understandable. “I paid $35,000 for this property 35 years ago,” he said, “and I’ve been offered $1.3 million for a portion of it. The question isn’t ‘Why would I sell?’ but rather ‘why wouldn’t I sell?’”
1929 REO SpeedWagon. Photo courtesy Sekura Auctions.
As for any inventory that remains after the sale, King isn’t concerned. The city of Spruce Grove isn’t pressuring him to pare down his collection (which, King advises, undergoes environmental testing every few years), and even after selling off a portion of his land, King will still have three acres to house the inventory that doesn’t sell at auction.
1952 International cement truck. Photo courtesy Sekura Auctions.
A-Riverside is in a similar pressure-free position, but is taking advantage of the Kustom King sale to reduce its own inventory. As Sekura Auction’s Andrew Reeleder explained, “Ron Stropel (owner of A-Riverside) has always focused on trucks, while Murray King has focused on cars. When the Kustom King auction was announced, it just made sense for A-Riverside to capitalize on shared marketing and a shared auction venue.”
The Kustom King and A-Riverside sale will take place in Spruce Grove, Alberta, Canada, on August 16 and 17. For additional details on the sale, including a complete inventory list, visit SekuraAuctions.com.
* Based on most reports, one wouldn’t expect to see much of a car culture in North Korea, and indeed, “Thaddeus Stapleton’s” report from North Korea – published this week on Jalopnik – shows a lot of empty roads, but as a car enthusiast, he kept a keen eye out for what vehicles did ply the roads there and found quite the variety of old cars, military vehicles, and new luxury vehicles.
* Mac’s Motor City Garage this week dusted off an old GM video showing a couple of its postwar cars, a Hudson Commodore, and surprisingly its Cadillac Interceptor prototype, a car that looks an awful lot like one of the postwar Cadillac renderings we featured a few weeks ago.
* Over at VehicleRecovery.org, we came across a megagallery of British recovery trucks of all sorts of configurations.
* GM’s FastLane blog recently has been looking to the company’s past for something to write about and this week ran down a number of military prototypes that GM has had a hand in, including the Corvair-powered 1964 MGL/MOLAB developed for NASA but ultimately used by the U.S. Geological Survey.
An early model Subaru BRAT. Image courtesy Alden Jewell.
According to chaos theory, there’s no way of predicting the outcome one event will have on another. A butterfly flaps its wings in Barcelona, for example, and a new weather pattern forms that will bring rain to Chicago. Or the country of West Germany objects to low U.S. poultry prices and a utility vehicle that would define the Subaru brand for years is born. Introduced in 1977 for the 1978 model year, Subaru’s Bi-drive Recreational All-terrain Transporter (or BRAT, as it’s commonly known) proved that aspirational cars need not be expensive, and helped to solidify Subaru’s reputation for building dependable, go-almost-anywhere vehicles.
In the early 1960s, both Germany and France strenuously objected to the low price of U.S.-produced poultry in the European market and countered by placing an import tariff on U.S. chickens to protect their own farmers. The United States responded with tariffs of its own, including a jaw-dropping 25 percent tax on imported light trucks, which effectively excluded the Volkswagen transporter from the U.S. market. As the years went by, other tariffs associated with the “Chicken Tax” were repealed, but the imposed duty on light trucks remained in place to protect U.S. truck manufacturers. Automakers found creative ways to circumvent this, such as shipping only the cab chassis assembly to the United States (which was subject to a 4 percent fee) and installing beds in port, which is how the Chevrolet LUV (built by Isuzu) and the Ford Courier (built by Mazda) circumvented the rules. Other manufacturers built plants in the United States, eliminating the need to import their light trucks altogether.
1980 Subaru BRAT with aftermarket fiberglass camper shell. Photo by Nicholas D.
By the mid-1970s, the import and compact truck craze was firmly established in the United States, and Subaru America decided it wanted in on the action as well. Petitioning the home office in Japan to create a compact pickup based upon the established Subaru station wagon (“Leone” in the rest of the world), Subaru Japan created a part-time four-wheel-drive pickup with one very unique feature: To circumvent the Chicken Tax, the Subaru BRAT would feature rear-facing jump seats in the bed, complete with lap belts to meet NHTSA requirements. With this unusual (and potentially dangerous) seating arrangement, the Subaru BRAT was not a compact pickup in the eyes of the U.S. government; instead, it was a passenger car wholly exempt from the Chicken Tax.
Early BRAT models featured Subaru’s EA-71 horizontally opposed four-cylinder engine, measuring 1.6 liters in displacement and producing 67 horsepower and 81 pound-feet of torque. A four-speed manual transmission was the only gearbox offered, and a single-speed transfer case allowed drivers to shift from front-wheel drive to four-wheel drive on the fly. The BRAT’s reasonable ground clearance made the ute a serviceable off-roader, as long as the driver’s expectations were grounded in reality. To emphasize the BRAT’s capability, Subaru offered a plethora of off-road accessories, including grille guards, supplemental lighting, roof bars (not to be called roll bars, for safety reasons) and even a light-duty winch that mounted to the grille guard.
Rear jump seats on 1980 BRAT with camper shell. Photo by Nicholas D.
For 1981, Subaru upped the BRAT’s engine size to 1.8 liters, utilizing the EA-81 horizontally opposed four-cylinder engine. Output grew to 73 horsepower and 94 pound-feet of torque, and higher-trim BRAT models now came with a two-speed transfer case (although base DL models still received the single-speed unit). In 1983, a turbocharged version of this engine was offered, producing 95 horsepower and 123 pound-feet of torque, though offered exclusively with a three-speed automatic transmission.
The Subaru station wagon on which the BRAT was based received a remake for the 1980 model year, but the BRAT soldiered on in its original form until its refresh for 1982. That had little effect on the BRAT’s popularity, as the mini-pickup helped to grow Subaru’s total U.S. sales from 80,826 units in 1977 (the year before the BRAT’s introduction) to 103,274 units in 1978 and 127,871 units in 1979. While not all of this growth can be attributed to the BRAT, there’s no denying that the truck’s novelty factor helped to draw buyers into Subaru showrooms.
A highly accessorized early BRAT, from Subaru’s own collection. Photo by Alipyon.
By the mid-Eighties, the appeal of the BRAT had begun to dim. Its rear jump seats were too small for adults, as the molded headrests typically hit mid-back. Other import pickups offered more power and better functionality, and a simple redesign wasn’t likely to reverse the BRAT’s declining sales. Subaru opted to focus on its wagons and sedans instead, which proved to be the right move to further establish the brand as the import of choice in snowbelt states.
The BRAT remains a sought-after used car to this day, thanks in part to its mechanical simplicity and strong aftermarket support. A failed attempt by Subaru to market a modern successor (the Subaru Baja, sold from 2003-2007) proved that capturing lightning in a bottle is even more difficult the second time around.
When the Camaro came out in 1967, some concepts were released at the same time to accompany the new model at the auto shows. The Waikiki Woodie concept and the Cherokee were the more popular versions, but often lost in the shuffle was the Caribe, which asks the question, show car or show truck? The Caribe was built on the Camaro platform and was used in 1968-1969 on the auto show circuit. Similar to Evel Knievel’s Cadillac we featured a few weeks ago, the Caribe featured a built-in pickup bed with the addition of a roll bar behind the seats. The body panels and sheetmetal appear to be like those of the Camaro, with specialized wheels, tires and hood to complete the concept. Had this car made the production phase, a top of some sort would have most likely been designed. Not sure how the target audience of the Camaro and El Camino fans reacted to the Caribe, but it likely turned some heads during the show season.
Regretfully, this is the only picture we have of this car, and the tag for the issue it appeared in has been lost. We will no doubt stumble upon it when we go through an old issue of Hemmings, and when that day comes, we will update you on why it was in Hemmings Motor News.