(Photos by musicalmcs8706)
Detroit was all about Euro-style in the eighties, so why not a Euro-style truck? Anyone who’s been to Europe knows that all the small- and medium-size trucks there use van-based cabs, whose shorter length maximizes load space, something especially important in the cramped confines of older cities. And for some reason, flatbed stake trucks with a body like this one are almost ubiquitous in European cities, although usually their beds have drop-down metal sides.
That’s not always the case, as this ’80s Ford Transit dropside does have wood in its…dropsides. If it were from Germany, they’d be of steel.
So the question is: Is this a factory job? Was it done by a professional converter? Or is it something else? At first I thought it might be home-brewed, maybe an old RV whose body got torn off in a tornado or such, but a shot of the interior puts that idea to bed.
These just always appeal to me, and I’d love to have one, but with a somewhat shorter bed that dumps. That would make it a very compelling candidate to replace my old and battered F-100, whose infirmities are only brought into starker contrast on cold, wet mornings.
That is very interesting — I’ve only seen these as cutaways. I’ll always lean toward GM but I think this era Econoline style was a better-built machine than the “G-rides” I always thought they were very well styled too.
The cutaways along with this strange version are no doubt full-frame vehicles but what about the “regular” E150s & E250s? Were they unitized like the G-vans?
I like the fact that these could be had with anything from the 300 I6 to the 460V8. Nice find here — it looks very well preserved. I think it would be even better with a rollback bed on it 🙂
The Ford E series from 1975 to present is body on frame. I suspect that this is why Ford got more of the market in ambulances and other more customized bodies mounted with these vans.
The Econoline is a much better truck than the GM and Chryslers and part of that is due to the fact that it has a proper full frame in every version since 1975. Note that the Chrysler “cutaway” was just that and they retained their unitized construction and kept the ribbed floor section between the frame “rails”.
I’ll add that the outside door handles on the Fords were much friendlier to operate: the buttons were rounded off, they had no abrupt edges, and they required less force to open. I have an ’81 Chevy Shorty kidnap van and the door handles remind me how bad my tendonitis has become. The edges are sharper than they should be and they sort of dig into the 2.5 usable fingers on my left hand while I push the button in.
The Fords also had what I think is a far superior interior door latch design — merely squeeze the paddle against the armrest to open the door, locked or unlocked to open the door. I believe the Mark III Lincoln had this design also.
To get out of my Chevy , I untwist/pull up the handle 45 degrees or so to open the door — it’s an awkward motion — only to realize I inadvertently locked the door when I laid my arm on the windowsill. Chevy’s safety feature (bah) forces me to unlock the door & pull the lever again. It’s a minor issue but has become more of an irritant as I lose strength in my left arm.
Unitized GM vans? I know the newer fullsize GM vans (GMC Savanna and Chevy Express) have a lighter frame than the old ones, but AFAIK they still have full-length frame rails.
My 1984 3/4 ton GMC fullsize van had a full ladder frame. I had to weld in a replacement floor from behind the front seats all the way to the back because it rotted out, so I got a good look at the frame from all angles.
It may have had frame rails but they were welded to the body, hence they are a unibody.
They’re big, beefy frame rails, but they happen to be welded to the floor pan. That’s how my Dodge cutaway (Chinook camper body) is; as Eric said, you can see the ribbed original floor between the rails. Nothing wrong with that, just how it was built.
But I seriously doubt that’s the case with the longer-wheelbase versions that Dodge made back in the late seventies for so many Class-C motorhomes.
That is the way they made all of them including the really long wheelbase versions. A former tenant of mine acquired a late 70’s Dodge Class C motorhome that had a case of rot and had a tree fall on it. He converted it to a flatbed/car hauler. I stopped by to pickup the (past due) rent one day and he had stripped off all of the coach part exposing the sheet metal “floor” attached to the frame rails. It was one of if not the longest versions available.
These van-based cab-overs are ubiquitous in Asia. I remember when I moved from Deagu to Masan, Korea and I hired two men, who had a Bongo truck by Kia. This is an an exact copy of a Mazda product. All my home’s contents were lashed onto it and the three of us made the trip. All my stuff was covered with tarps and secured with huge, industrial size v-belts.
We made that trip just fine and that truck had a three litre naturally aspirated diesel. It didn’t take a 6000 lb, 400 hp truck to do this job. It took a 3000 lb, 100 hp truck that sold for maybe $20,000 when it was new.
been there done that
In some years of production you could get the Econoline as a Cab and Chassis with the back closed off like that for fitting a box that you didn’t want to access from the cab but the open back “cutaway” was much more popular.
Yes that is what I was thinking. This is rather like a u-haul style van with the big container box missing. Quite an attractive rig though.
A quick check of a 1980 Econoline brochure notes that there was a separate brochure for Econoline Chassis models for RV and other uses. I would imagine that the chassis/cab was available from the factory (special order only?), although probably not a very common one.
Our church had the almost 90 year old louvers replaced in the bell towers. This truck was used to haul the louvers around. They were large enough to fill the back of the bed with one stacked on top of another. This truck was in really good condition, save the wear on the driver’s seat. Paul, I wondered the same thing until I saw the interior as well.
I once saw a 1940 Ford truck that had a European-type drop-side flatbed mounted on it. The owner had bought the truck that way and had no info on the origin of the bed.
I don’t know the year of this truck but I had a long 86 model E100 with a 300 6 cylinder. Took an office job and had no more need. Kicking myself as I write this. If there was ever a better truck I am at a loss to identify it.
Most trucks are sold as cab n chassiss and get a locally made dropsider fitted ute bodies often dont suit if all around deck access is required
Ford, GM, and Dodge produced these “cutaways” based on their 3/4 and 1 ton vans. All were body on full chassis. These are trucks. I can’t imagine the Dodge (discontinued and replaced by the Benz-based Sprinter) not having a full frame. Fords also had the diesel option, too. This CC does appear to be a recycled U-Haul truck, considering the back-of-cab enclosure. However, these cab enclosures are readily available after-market for all of the Big-3 cutaways. I’ve seen ads for them in my landscape trade journals, and elsewhere. Always did make sense to me to use one of these rather than a pick-up based cab/chassis, considering their shorter length. On a side note, these Ford vans are soon to be extinct, replaced by a Sprinter-type van very soon. The Sprinter-type design is superior in every way; size, handling, efficiency, durability. GM will probably wait awhile, because their Express/Savanna design is not too old, introduced in ’97. Chrysler has something coming to replace the Sprinter (lost in the Chrysler/Benz divorce) also, from Fiat/Iveco. All of these will be available in cab/chassis or cutaway versions.
Nope no “real” full frame on the Dodge cutaway, see the above replies where Paul confirms his Dodge Class C uses the unitized style sheet metal frame rails with a ribbed panel creating the top of the frame rails and substituting for traditional cross members.
Looks like a Tata 407 to me, and would be about the same size. However, the Tata has a ~2 ton load and a ~100hp noisy diesel four. If it looks surprisingly similar to a van by another manufacturer, it’s because the design *was* cribbed.
These kind of pickup-trucks are more an japanese idea. Not an European idea. In Europa we hardly ever have made any pickups. The VW had their Transporter and Renault had their Trafic.And Ford had som Transit’s, other than that it’s pretty thin.
Japanese pickups was cheap, small and had about 50-80 hp Straight four dieselengines. They had and have an awful comfort, lousy acceleration and where very noisy.The american pickups from this era was much mor comfortable, much more quiet and used a lot more gas. The raliability is about the same for an small Toyota or Nissan compared to an fullsize Chevy or Ford pickup truck.
Today we have quite many US-pickuptrucks in Norway from til 90s. However they are and was mostly sold with a very noisy dieselengine. Gas is expensive here in Norway, we pay about 10 USD for a gallon of petrol today. You lucky american pay under the half!
Looks like a pretty handy truck. There are modern versions available out here now in the form of Ford Transits, M-B Sprinter, Fiat Ducato and Iveco Daily, although van versions are far more popular – similar to what BillMitchell referred to in Europe. These heavy duty vans are a half-way house between a normal pickup and a cab-over medium duty truck, and usually have a crew cab option with 4-across seating in the rear.
I’d like to have one with a banana back car-carrying body if I had the spare room and $$$.
I would bet a week’s pay…that’s a castoff U-Haul with the box removed.
They tend to be in good structural and cosmetic shape when sold, minus the faded paint…somehow they control surface corrosion. And they have googobs or trucks to sell. Some in good shape, some not.
I see them, time to time…feed-wagons; Sanford & Son type haul-it-all businesses. The boxes usually are gone. Many of those cutaways had U-Haul’s custom fiberglass caps on the back side of those cabs.
I have seen some conversions like this at a place that remounted ambulances and they did all kinds conversions like this and even made sleeper type cabs to fill the gap between the cab and the flat bed.