Small local car show tonight, maybe 40 cars in total. We had not 1, not 2, but 3 pre-1940 Chevy's. A 1933, a 1936, and a 1939. Way cool! Here they are, in order. Enjoy.....
I've got one in the garage and one on the side of my house. For Sale 1940 Chevrolet 4 door sedan $4000 obo see in Cl***ifieds.
theres also a 35 3 window, 29 sedan and a 38 sedan on my block. Thats 5 38 and older Chevys within 600 feet of each other. But overall by far most builds are Fords, did Henry build that many more Fords than Chevys back then?
It's not so much that as it is that the 30s era Chevies had a TON of wood in them and they didn't hold up as well.
Completely wood framed from sills on up. Add moisture and a few years outside, not garaged, and "car-be-gone".
Both my 36's are wood, last year of it. That would be why the 37 and up are still around. I removed all the wood out of the doors and used square tube to re build them, worked great. Both of my cars are Arizona cars so the wood is actually pretty good, mainly the sagging doors. I am also framing out most of the interior where I can hide it and boxed the frame.
Well I don't know about that! It seems that the only chevy, or gm products, that I can find to build with fair bodies are late 20s models. And there would have been a lot more fords around to build if it wouldn't have been for stock car racing. I know a lot of chevys weren't used cuz they would expode or fall apart in a pile of wood upon impact.
I have found many old ( pre 35 ) chevy cowls with piles of unrecognizable metal strewn around them ! Even several trucks with engines, hood, cowls and the pile of metal! But lots of manufactures did that International trucks come to mind!
Early Chevies are relatively thick on the ground here, more common than Fords. If you spot something American-shaped and borderline rebuildable sitting at the back of a breaker's yard etc., chances are it's a '37 Chevy four-door.
Here's a few more Chevys from the North East. They are definitely outnumbered by Fords but they're out there.
In 1932 , Chevrolet outsold the mighty DEUCE ... Ford had about a 3 month shorter ... production run due to a late start for the 1932 Ford production. BUT in 1957 ... Ford outsold Chevrolet. Weird ... because now there are lots more 32 Fords than 32 Chevys and there are more 57 Chevys than 57 Fords. .
My Ozzie '35 Standard phaeton and a friends Ozzie '35 Master All-Enclosed coupe (Sloper), the odd ones out in a Ford dominated world.
Chevrolet in 1929, also outsold the Model A Ford, by almost 2 to 1. This helped convince Henry to build a "V8", to counter the "Cast Iron Wonder" 6 cylinder. The fact that Chevies were selling so well, probably contributed to taking longer to get away from the "wood construction". After all, why change you design when you could hardly keep up to production demands already? Then when that fateful day arrived in Oct 1929, and the market crashed, the timing was not very good to retool your entire construction methods, thus delaying the move to all steel bodies.
Here is my 1932 Chevrolet Model BB Confederate Pick-Up. It has all the original wood in it for now. We are starting on the new Ch***is soon. Then we will be replacing all the inner wood framing.
Not exactly hot rod material, But old wood frame chevs are still around. This is my 28, original wood. Hell, original everything. It'll chug along about 50mph, which is about as fast as I really would want to go in it at this point.
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