traditional police answer please?

question for the traditional police
i was wondering about all the sedans and coups i'v seen turned it to trucks. i know this was a popular farmer thing to do with the old cars sonce they really had no value to them back then **** was this reall hot rod material or is this really kind of a new thing. ?

 

They turned them into trucks during the war (WWII) so they could get more fuel ration stamps. You were able to get fuel easier with a truck than a car.

I dont really understand the second part of your question..maybe someone else does.

 

the secon part is did any one do this turn car into truck just to build a hot rod back in the 50's & 60's. or is this more of a thing todays builders are doing?

 

That I don't know.

 

Richard Gregg took a 50 Ford shoebox and turned it into a pickup in the 50's it was called "The Capri" it was very cool.

 

Turning cars into trucks is a new fad... not really "traditional hot rod" stuff.

There are always exceptions to the rules... such as my buddy Tim's hot rod, built in '49 by his dad and a friend. But, it is a totally different genre than the sedan turned pickup or coupe turned pickup rods of today.

It is more along the lines of the "Gas Ration Trucks" of yesteryear.

In fact... this one, done in the 50's... was done to haul Tim's family around... he was able to justify the race car 'cause he could fit the whole family in it and make it a "family deal"... and not just a two seater.

 

thats kool **** i bet he got a lot of **** for hanging that box off the back

 

how about all those 210 handymans and Nomads turned el caminos in the 60's???? ---- Not new as far as I know.....

 

There were quite a few cars tuned into Ranchero/ElCamino/Ute type trucks over the years.
Most were just old sedans or stationwagons with the top and trunk cut off and a hunk of plywood or a camper shell or even a cab-over camper bolted on.
Strictly utilitarian road gypsy faire.
I've seen more that a couple '59-60 Caddy sedans meet this fate..and they weren't flower cars either.
In the middle 50's? there was a feature on a '53 or '54 Oldsmobile turned into a truck with proper bodywork. It' had the back of a Chevy truck cab grafted on and to top it off there was a pic of Hollywood Paladium TV's MC Lawrence Welk checking out the engine.

I saw a picture of the first Death Valley Park Ranger patrol car of Death Valley in their museum. The park opened in '33 and the patrol car was a '32 3 window coupe with one of those boxes in the back instead of a trunk lid and a trailer hitch sticking out under the gas tank and bumper!

 

I have somewhere here an issue of "Cl***ic Trains" magazine that has a spread taken in the '40s of a train arriving at a station down south somewhere. Very visible in the shot is a 30-31 A sedan with the body cut off and a pickup bed added to it.

My blue '31 A was cut off the same way - they never even capped off the back, but found an A pickup bed to stick on it. There was a 1951 plate in with the other **** in the bed.

We had a '31 Plymouth tudor body that had been cut off and capped during the same era; my friend also got another Model A that again was capped off with the rear body panel, it had a home-made wooden bed - and there was yet another Model A turned truck in the yard mine came from, but the body had fallen apart on it - that one had been done from a sedan with the round-top doors.

All of those were done before 1960, if that helps any.

Heck, my grandparents sold their '59 Buick 4-door in 1969 to a guy who turned it into a pickup truck and got a few more years out of it. I have no idea what kind of God-awful abortion it may have looked like, though. A junkyard I used to go to had a '63 Chevy 2-door Biscayne or Bel Air that had the same conversion done - it was fairly well done, had a section of a pickup truck cab back welded into it. And in another yard someone had attempted to do the same to an early '70s AMC Amb***ador wagon, although it came out looking more like something fell on the roof than something you would do on purpose.

I've seen a Chevy Chevette and a Ford Festiva turned into pickups, too. The Ford it turned out was also turned into an electric car, that one may still be on the road. The Chevette was just something along the side of a road coming home across Ohio on a two-lane instead of the interstate.


So is it a new fad? No. Is it done more often now? Probably not.


By the way, the pickup box in the trunk of a coupe was a factory option for many years - 1936 through 1942 for Chevrolet, and I know others had it too.

 

I imagine that the RPU's that are built today weren't around much way back when. It's easier to build something out of parts that way, and less gl*** and other headaches to deal with. Back then there were still mostly whole original cars around, so they made trucks out of them for various reasons. Coupes were often converted by farmers, or tradesmen. I know of a couple that were done in the early 40's, and a couple that were built in the 60's out of "late models". These were simply cut off behind the door post and enclosed. But the later ones were done as a way of getting around having to fix a lot of rust issues, more then hot rod projects.

 

I have posted these pictures before, but this is an Austin pickup that has had a trunk added where the bed used to be, to make a coup out of a truck. I got the car as a roller on the stock '31 Austin frame and running gear in '58 or '59. So it worked both ways, depending on what you wanted. I remember lots od A coups running around with a box where the trunk lid should have been.

 

There were accessory pickup boxes available which fit into a coupe tailend with the back panel removed. Also some factory(here in the USA) mid-30s Coupe Pickups which had either fixed boxes in the tail or a expandable box which could be slid out when the deck lid was open. Chevrolet and Studebaker made such cars, perhaps others.

I have a do***ent for a 36 Chevy Coupe Pickup, an oddity for sure.

In answer to the question, there is little to nothing done now that hasn't already been done, but common a****st hotrodders, I would say NO. This is a modern "fad" started by the rat boys and a good use for Fordor and other undesireable bodies if there is such a thing anymore.

 

I worked on a couple of Coupes that had been changed into Trucks.
The scars were still visible and very old...
But they are now both Coupe's again.


And I found a pic of Traditional Police...

 

My brother's '29 pickup is actually a shortened sedan. Was done in the 50's or 60's and still wears the same metallic green paint sprayed back then.

Not sure if it was shortened to be a "rod" or just some farmer's hauler that later got turned into a hot rod.

Search posts by Corn Fed for pics.

 

In Poland after WWII no person was able to own a car with an engine size over 122ci or 2 ltrs...... many personal cars wre converted to trucks

 

Any pic's of a coupe with a factory truck box option ?

Did the box slide into the trunk with some overhang ??

I can see were this would have been done as an option or aftermaket add on so a guy would get more use out of his coupe.

 

I saw lots of Farmer converted A's long ago...many had quite nice proportions and could have been roddable except that Farmers routinely did reallydamnbad welding with Sears buzzbox electrics, and it would have been far easier to start with a sedan or just find the relatively common real pickups to start with. The real farmer ones looked like ratrod bodies.
Early rodders represented in the magazines seemed to favor a restorod look for Ford pickups!

 

Man....every year at the annual LeMay old car auction....there are at least 5-6 coupe/sedan/roadster's turned pickup conversions......there are quite a few here in the NW.
And like Bruce said, many are pretty crude....I've seen Pontiac, Chevy's, Buicks, Plymouth's along with the typical "A"'s.....

I can imagine that many were turned to hotrods once the war was over, and possibly converted back to their former self......

 

Go here for pictures and info: There was a time that I considered doing that to my 41 Chevy Coupe.
Ol Blue

http://home.znet.com/p1937/Ute.htm

 

I posted this in another thread not long ago, but I had a friend that p***ed away about 8 yrs ago (he was 87) that had a 35 Chevrolet Cabriolet turned pickup. His wife turned it over in a ditch and tore up the rear of the car so he cut it off and built a stake bed for it. He offered it to me and I wish now I had bought it. It was torch welded together. The grille and headlights were worth twice what he wanted for the ole thing.

 

wow once again amazed by response and information on this board i love it.
now every one mentioned that there mothers brothers dads mistress had one of these lets see a few mor picks i may be flirting with the i dea. a regular late 20's or early 30's pick up is a littel close for comfort. would like to have a luggage area behind the seats then the bed behind that
thanks all

 

If you think about it, by postwar there were some serious improvements in the roads, and new cars were lower. If you didn't want to spend on a new truck, old cars were available cheap and offered farm/off-road friendly tall skinny wheels & frame a foot off the ground.

Hot rodders and restorers really overlook how off-road capable early cars are. Back then, the roads often ****ed badly.

 

Coupe pickup was offered by Ford one year only, 1937, but was certainly available in very nicely finished forms from Model T days on...after the end of removeable decks in 1927, the bolt-on kit ones were severely limited by size of decklid opening, so farmers typically cut away most of rear body to mount a full size bed.
Like I said above, many of these conversions were very nice looking vehicles aside from atrocious welding...
Some I've seen were downright beautiful "Why didn't they produce that" jobs...best I ever saw was in a junkyard around maybe Arab, Alabama: 1936 Ford Deluxe sedan, rear body off and filled with decently fitted back from a pickup cab of some sort, and a steel Ford bed, year unknown. It was a GREAT looking truck!

 

Model A Versions.

http://home.cogeco.ca/~deuceguy/Model_A_Scans_Main.htm

 

There is/was (I haven't been there in awhile) a guy in ****e, MT that had a wrecking yard with a line of truck-converted cars that ran the entire length of the yard. There was even a Beacon in there, plus lots of odd things from the 20's and 30's. Gas stations would take wrecks and convert them to trucks, too, since they were cheap and they were a distinctive advertising tool. I've seen several 50's Buicks converted plus Olds and Cad's from the 50's. I've seen Pintos and minivans converted too, so the idea is still around.

 

I remember putting a set of Hellwig helper springs on a 52 International PU I had back in the 70's.
This thread made me think of it because I'm sure an overload spring was in order on these conversions.
Might be where a company like Hellwig got it's start ?