I've seen a couple of A coupes lately that have had their backends chopped off. The A in this pic has another quarter "grafted" on, but looks to me that the deed was done by the previous owner. Is there reason why people did this? Was it common for farmers to convert a coupe into a pickup by chopping its rear off? -Karl
Hey strait edge, wasn't it 3 gallons for cars and 5 for pickups. I think that's what I read somewhere...
That's an incredible pic! I need some 21 inch wires... and that T tank in the pic... I bet they've got a ton! Where is that place?
The HAMB training is now complete. I now view pictures and look around the main subject to see what is in the background, rather than the focal point. So I see a sea of parts and a boatload of 28/9 Ford pickup cabs. Love em. Where is this place?
I know that these are not model a trucks but they are common in canada. The farmers called them Thatcher wagons, if they had a truck, they could burn purple gas, a car could not. You see everything from 20's - 60's cars cut up like this.
very common to have the back ends cut off. i've seen a few here and there. there's a guy down the street from me that has a really nice running/driving example of a 31 5 window with the back end hastily cut out and a makeshift plank bed installed. it's been that way since the mid 30's or so. cool piece of history.
Sweet Jeezuz! Where is this yard? I see at least 5 Closed Cab 28-29 cabs in there. Most look nicer, at that distance, than what I am working with.
i cant believe that know one has said anything about the deck lid still being there those dissapear faster than the rear quarters tk
It's in Iola Kansas, just a few miles from my inlaws. They are on the web over here - http://modelthaven.com/index.html. Whenever I'm down to see the inlaws I try to swing by and "window shop". Someday I'd like to drag one of these home. So if I see one of these again and actually score it, can I get replacemnet quarters to put it back together? Who is the best source for A sheetmetal? -K
theres a yard a couple towns over that has a 31 modal A that was hack of during ww2 and had a bed grafted and a v8 put in it, the weird thing is that it has all military logos and numbers on it with a military pink slip, she runs and he wants 1000 for it solid car too
Lot of them got done during WWII, I think Sears & Roebuck and other mail-order places sold kits - you could make them into tractors too. Here's info copied from elsewhere: It's not really a mystery, these coupe-to-pickup conversions were pretty common. Most were home made, but there were aftermarket kits. The main reason for these conversions was very simple: WWII gasoline rationing. P***enger cars were highly limited, but if you had a "truck" you got a better ration stamp.
I think that last one is scarier than mine! Anyway, is there a good source for repair panels to rebuild the quarters on one of these coupe hacks? Has anyone done it before?
I had a '31 Chevy 5 window with the decklid removed, and a plank style bed built into the trunk. Old guy used it in the oil fields as a truck, all good metal, a little rotted wood. Ran good.
Mine came hacked in the rear, a pain to fix. The only good thing about it was when I picked up the body it fit in the F1 bed with the tailgate closed. My father-in-law told me when he was a boy in Upper MI, most deck lids had been removed during the war, and many were dragged behind the cars they came from to skid loads of firewood up to the house.
The Jalopy Journal
