While not exactly stock anymore, the 1953 (?) Chevy 3100 struck me as it sat curbside ahead of the Chevy 2500 that’s around 65 years newer. Beyond height due to ground clearance and the extra length of the crew cab portion on the 2500, there are similarities. The beds look the same length, the hoods are similar as well, and the overall roof height isn’t massively different either especially as the older truck looks slightly lowered. And they are both white as…snow. Even the bed on the older truck isn’t any more accessible with the owner’s side panel attachments; perhaps this truck actually is used to still haul stuff although it looked to be far more on the show side of the ledger than most trucks in town. And in case you weren’t aware, the 3100 actually denotes the half ton trim, the 3/4 ton would have been a 3600 and a one-ton a 3800 – compared to todays 1500, 2500, and 3500 designations. I wonder if the newer, larger, heavier truck actually sees better fuel economy?
I don’t know, (IMO)perhaps a side to side overlay would have displayed similarities/differences better. The bed height on the new truck seems to be within a couple of inches of the side panels on the old one. The gap between the tops of the tires and the fenders is common on unaltered new trucks. Even so, if it were a “desired” single cab version, the newer truck has still grown to be larger than its’ older sibling.
Trucks made in the last 60 years have made these older ones stand out to me for their bedsides that are so much lower than the beltline of the cab.
And until you pointed it out just now, I had no idea that the 3100 was the 1/2 ton, and would have assumed it to be a much heavier duty version.
I have a 1952 3600 (5-window BTW) which seems entirely stock except for the wheels and tires. It does sit higher than the 3100 in the image. It also is about 10 inches longer (125″ wheel base vs. ~115 for the 3100) and the extra length is all in the cargo bed.
The ride is pretty stiff and with it’s 4.56:1 rear axle mileage is nothing great. I can get about 15 mpg at a steady 45-50 mph. All said, it is a blast to drive with its 4-speed transmission (granny 1st), armstrong steering, and non-powered drum breaks.
Here’s a picture of my 1952 5-window 3600
Without CAFE, would mid-westerners be driving Buick Electra 335s today? EVs aren’t bound by any rules of efficiency, so now 5,200 pound sports sedans are the norm and 9,000 pound SUVs are on the way from GM.
“Without CAFE…”
Oh, please, please, PLEASE let’s find out.
CAFE was a ginormous mistake. Repeal CAFE, let folks buy what they want instead of what The Government thinks they should have.
Here are the factory dimensions for a 1953 pickup. Below is a list of similar dimensions for a 2015 Silverado 1500. Compare and contrast. The key dimension for me (at 5’7″, with a 30″ inseam) is the platform height at 29.75″, compared to 36″ for the 2015. Every little bit helps.
Here’s the modern Silverado.
That’s closer to a 1949 3100 with pull down door handles, one piece door glasses and a driver’s side crotch cooler vent .
Those vents work very well BTW .
It may be lowered, it may just the original springs are sacked after 73 years….
Interestingly, when maintained stock these old Advance Design trucks are still goo daily drivers and work rigs .
I only sold my 1949 3100 because my knees couldn’t stand operating the clutch anymore .
Chevy used diaphragm typ clutches beginning in 1941 to sharply reduce clutch pedal effort .
-Nate
It looks to be stock ride height to me.
Almost everything is bigger these days…
The 2500 behind the 3100 is proof of the truckbesity epidemic.
Great find! The differences between these two vehicles are significant – particularly in day to day usage getting in and out of the cab and putting things in and out of the bed. Not everything is improved on the newer truck…
Well this one was stock this morning and apparently still a working truck with two guys in the cab heading somewhere. I was tooling along at 65 when I saw the truck in my rear view mirror slowly gaining on me. So I slowed to 64 to allow them to get next to me. Can’t really get the front while driving only the rear and it looked to be a 56. This was a surprise.
The newer model is too tall for what it is but beating it with an ugly stick worked fine they really are awful to look at, both models are on our roads but I’d take the old 3100 in a heartbeat but definitely not the newer Chevy pickup.
The old bus is state-of-the-mass-produced-art for 1950-odd, with a bit of then-current style thrown over: ohv, hydraulic brakes, syncro on (a few) gears, etc. The 2021 job has had not a cent spent on design (and I’m not talking looks, which I don’t fancy but which are in truth no worse than other current stuff, if over-glanded). It’s barely advanced on the 1950, other than some metals and electronics, and that’s just pathetic.
To wit, it needs to seat five, just like, say, an Xbox cabin can do, plus a bit of width. It needs, for US use, an inline motor at least 4-cyl long, so that’s an Xbox bonnet plus a bit (with some panel-bashing, natch). It needs a bed about what it has, so that stays. So already, with my cut-n-shut, we’ve knocked, what, four feet off the thing? It doesn’t need an 11-foot high fuck-you grille. And it doesn’t need a cabin-raising separate chassis from 1950, as the unit-body tech has – would you believe it – moved on since then. So, goodbye to 1000lbs and hello to another 10 mpg. And good stylists, if they still make them, could make this now potentially snub-nosed thing look as good as contemporary stuff does, that is, desirable in its time.
I had to squeeze past one of these road-blockers on a narrow road just the other day, and in anything but the US context, they are truly ridiculous vehicles. Which probably brought on this rant.
I’m sure not asking to bring back 1950, but I do resent the sheer lack of effort that these current monsters represent. They literally do not have to be so big and dumb: we really can now do more with less.
Well said Justy .
OTOH, Generous Motors Corp. wants to make as much money as they can, not build world class products .
-Nate
“And it doesn’t need a cabin-raising separate chassis from 1950, as the unit-body tech has – would you believe it – moved on since then.”
Yeah…’cause NOBODY buys a Chassis-Cab model, has it lengthened or shortened, and puts a motor-home, or service box, or dump-box, or U-Haul Van body, or some other specialized equipment on the thing.
And when loaded to capacity, an X-box crumple zone would be plenty in a collision. That’s why we have breakable legs. Just add forty more explosive devices in the passenger compartment.
We do agree that the new models are too tall. When you have to invent a tailgate with a built-in step ladder, you’ve gone too high. And the headlights are similarly too-high, annoying vehicles approaching from the front, and distracting vehicles ahead traveling in the same direction.
Easily done, Sir! 1950-style chassis only out back, like this little dump-box one, from the now-deceased Aussie Ford Falcon ute, which you could get in cab-chassis form. And no, they don’t snap, even when hugely over-burdened. You could even buy custom-made double-axle ones.
Motorhome…
..and U-haul. Well, when you get hauled.
Which one of those practical utes you tout is the one that seats five or six and uses a transverse Toyota xBox 1.5l while towing a gooseneck construction trailer in 4lo over the unpaved roads at 7.000 – 9,000 feet in a Wyoming winter where ground clearance is useful as you seem to suggest? No, I doubt the pictured truck does so every day, but I do believe it uses all of those attributes during its year there. It’s not a truck you would find commonly in downtown San Francisco but in the middle of the continent? Thick as fleas.
– Paul’s xBox did fine off-road but he wasn’t towing anything, when the road turned wet by going through a stream with banks it was a bit of a problem even with soft tires, ground clearance even lifted was a concern (need moar lift…), but we never did try to fit all five of us into it, I’ll admit. It did the job, sure, but was it best suited for it? Not really.
You can get a pickup in two door regular cab form so there’s about three feet if the length is the problem. Just nobody buys them, it’s generally a poor value proposition. You could easily drop the chassis a bit too, commonly done to 2wd pickups for a cruiser look by a tuner crowd subset, the cab really isn’t that high due to the frame if you look at those, it also could be done with a 4wd too if you really wanted. The width is no more than any medium delivery van and less than many box trucks, surely a common sight on the world’s roads.
I am sorely tempted to reply that the rest of the world – with whom America shares an atmosphere, oddly enough – manages largely to get by without them in many extremes of conditions, but that, though accurate, would be cheap. And anyway, I’ve understood for quite a while now (thanks to CCer’s, including you) that US road-use infrastructure has kind-of grown like Topsy around the big utes, work done by different vehicles elsewhere, and they couldn’t exactly be replaced tomorrow.
I also expressed things a bit sloppily. I don’t mean an actual xBox, but a cabin of its shape and size (perhaps plus a bit of width). I also meant the inline four to be north-south, meaning as much as a V8 could fit. That needs to be longer than something like the XBox hood, but it doesn’t need to be as foolishly long and high as the big utes’ unthinking designs have it.
Ground clearance? Sure. But if a stone-age chassis isn’t on top of that yet again, the whole vehicle drops down heaps. Great scads of uneccessary weight and wind resistance fall away. Those Falcon utes – hardly an advanced front-half of a car anyway, what with huge cast-iron six – weigh bugger-all, and believe me, they’re driven in ultra-tough conditions in the bush without breaking.
I did say that out of the US context, they are ridiculous, (which they are, literally unable to fit in lanes or many roads here, let alone parking spots and $7 gallon fuelling).
But even IN their context, I maintain that the design is lazy and wasteful. And I’ll be completely honest: especially when encountered out of their zone, their wasteful immensity does seem to be a manifestation of some of the worst, overbearing aspects of the great Republic itself.
True they really arent that big I daily drive some 3 times the size and weight empty which fits in traffic lanes around Auckland city just fine being a bonnet truck or conventional its not that high but I look down into Rams and others, they could look big if youre in a little car In guess.