Thanks for the PM OG, You are awesome. Thanks for chcking for that book on the car clubs. I think that would be kool to find about a couple of those clubs we were talking about. Take it easy man.. I was reading the article I found on the Pickup again. I was wrong when I said El Camino. Like was pointed out, they didnt come out till 59. IT was the Ranchero and Cameio that it was suppose to compete with.
The TV show "Trucks" did a feature on one a while back. There are lots of custom possibilities with the concept of grafting wagon quarters onto a step-side bed. How 'bout if some ambitious rodder built a Phantom "57 Ford pickup with '57 Ford wagon quarters? Could be a head-scratcher. Photoshop anyone?
That is a factory produced truck. It was dodges answer to the cameo. Pretty rare nowdays. My dad had a 58 back in the late 80's. Only 3 years (57,8,9)and low production. Rear fenders were used from the a s/w.
A few miles south of me a gentleman has one of these.He drove it for years then took the bed off and homemade a wrecker body on it. The bed sits in his cow pasture and the truck with the wrecker body sets by his old Mopar dealership. Of course if you can get inside a 60 Dodge Phoenix 2 dr post (black) with a short crossram still sets in the middle of it. Myself and 300 other scroungers are trying to outlive him. He says hardly a week goes by that a carload of car people stop and act like they are the first ones to discover it.
LOL Aaron...YOU need to find a picture book on truks and study it...those Dodge truck did come from the factory that way... and Choprods...way back when...a truck/pickup was a WORK vehicle...hauled stuff, got muddy inside, had mud/snow tires on it, was usually a stick shift...if you wanted luxury, you purchased a Cadillac...there was no in between... R-
those are way cool saw one about 20 years ago never saw another........way way cool........................and im not a mopar guy................
This one belongs to my grandfather.Its a 58 Pictured at Moparfest in New hamburg ont. this summer. Most people dont believe its stock. Supposed to be swaping in this HEMI sometime this winter.............
If I remember correctly they were made 57/58. Probably has a 318 Poly in it. Neighbor had one with a 361 4bbl, torqueflite, nice truck. Not as pretty as the Cameo, but pretty good for a parts bin deal. They were on a half ton ch***is so not like a El Camino or Ranchero. Still quite a few of them in the bushes. Side trims parts are very hard to get.
I like your thinking...I saw one in my teens and thought the same thing. And make it swoopy like that candy red big Chrysler from years ago.
HEY! If you want a model of one of those Dodge trucks you can get it thru Danbury Mint for about $130/$140 bucks.... I have one in my display case, nice detail and a nice looking truck. By the way there has been a mild kustom one of those Dodge pick-ups at the West Coast Kustoms run for the past few years. I'll see if I can dig out the pictures of it and post them.
Who digs up these ancient threads? The truck in question is a 1958 Sweepside. Sweepsides were made in 57, 58, and 59. 1959 is the rarest. 1957 used the 315 polyhead. 58 and 59 got the 318 poly and may also have offered the 315. You could also get the flat 6 all three years. The main body changes were from the cowl forward. The cabs and the beds were the same all three years. Yes, 1957/58 Dodge 2 door Suburban wagon 1/4s were used. Yes, it was a quickie, down and dirty response to the Cameo and the Ranchero. No special tooling needed. The large rear window was part of the Deluxe cab option. Otherwise they came with the small window. Someone mentioned the Styleside. That was a larger straight sided pickup box developed and made available for 1959 and 1960. It's introduction killed off the Sweptside. That and the fact that they were running out of 57/58 wagon quarters. When Dodge totally redesigned their trucks for 1961 they sold the Styleside tooling to Studebaker. Stude used these boxes on their trucks up until the end of Stude truck production.
The sweptside trucks came in three different flavors. Dodge for American customers. in 1957-59 Fargo for canadian customers only known to be made in 57-58 http://imageevent.com/idsnowman/58fargosweptside check out this website to see one getting a full frame off resto. and Desoto for overseas markets This is the only known picture of one! It is a 1957 and uses 1956 Plymouth 2-door wagon rear quarters unlike the Fargo and Dodge models that used Dodge 2-door wagon quarters. The Dodge versions are very rare, the Fargo versions are 4 times as rare as the Dodge version and the Desoto version only one picture exsists and none are known to survive. It may be hiding in Cuba or Central America where someone belives it was made by a local or it may have met it's fate nobody knows? The factory tossed all of thier historical truck information back in the 80s so production totals are unknown and no more factory photos are available. Putting a p***enger car front clip on one would require a lot of cutting to a pretty rare ride. And for those guys that said Chevy did not come out with the El Camino till 1959? They just are not looking hard enough!
my uncle george that lived in oklahoma had a 57 dodge like this .they were actually made to compete with the chevy cameo pick ups.
I remember running across a actual color ad for these Dodge Sweptsides in a late-'50s magazine. My first reaction was, "What the . .. ? Is THIS a joke? It wasn't. I kick myself for not keepig the ad, 'cause it's a nice piece of period history. These were a little incongruous in the way the elements were mated to one another. BUT, they did WILD things in the '50s!!! Their wild looks and rarity make them a treat to see anywhere nowadays!!! Such automotive ODDITIES should not be forgotten!
Roger, I know better than that. I had a picture attached that is now missing. Notice that there is about 4 years between my post and the next one. ha ha ha
40StudeDude Wrote: . . . way back when...a truck/pickup was a WORK vehicle...hauled stuff, got muddy inside, had mud/snow tires on it, was usually a stick shift...if you wanted luxury, you purchased a Cadillac...there was no in between... Anybody besides ME old enough to remember the pickup demo commercial (can't remember the MAKE) RE a new late-'50s pickup with a revolutionary "DOUBLE-WALL" bed??? They actually put 20 or 30 large cannon balls in the bed & took it out over twists, turns, up/down hills, etc. Dented the living HELL out of the INNER bed (of course, THIS was the PURPOSE of the demo). But the outer "pretty" surface was un****hed. I didn't dream it up. ANYBODY remember WHICH MAKE it was???
1946ChevyTruck, THANKS for giving a NUMBER made -- VERY rare truck!!! Yeah, it's a litle like the Edsel and the Studes of the time: Not REALLY "bad"-looking. But they just didn't catch on. And, like Stude & Packard, Dodge hauled off & TRIED an experiment to see if it might take off, USING some EXISTING sheetmetal & chrome. But the Sweptside didn't seem to hurt Dodge's BIG Picture, while Stude & Packard were losing dough big time. Packard had to bite the bullet, while Stude hit a HOMER with the Lark in '59 (but then, Studebaker had to be probably THE best company in terms of taking something OLD and making it look -- if not "new" -- pretty darn good! Hope that didn't seem to get off the theme too much; seemed smehow related to what was being tried in the later '50s!
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