A few years ago I was feeling secure enough in my job and doing the usual dreaming about road trip adventures that I decided it was time to start looking for an adventure-mobile. I was leaning towards a big SUV of some sort with four wheel drive. My main criteria were that it should be able to go anywhere, that my girlfriend and I could sleep in it as necessary, and that I didn’t want to spend a ton of money. Of course, I harbored fantasies of buying some classic hulk: an old Suburban or Wagoneer or maybe even something like this 1965 International Travelall. I am, after all, a classic car nut. Why else would I frequent this site?
The funny thing is that these Travelalls weren’t marketed as adventure-mobiles, just a big station wagon for you, your wife, and your seven chubby children. At least, that’s what “husky” meant whenever my mom took me shopping for clothes as a kid. On the other hand, I guess getting stuck in the mud is always an adventure.
No mud to be found anywhere on this one, and given the absolute lack of rust, it probably didn’t spend much time getting muddy anytime in its life either. That’s not to say the owner doesn’t take this one on adventures. Though you can’t really see it well in the picture above, that little white square in the lower corner of the windshield is a 7-day parking pass to Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park near Santa Cruz, CA–lots of great hikes there.
As no International expert, this front view is what leads me to believe this is a 65. This body style was made from 1961-68 with detail differences from year to year, grille changes being one of the more readily apparent. The 65 and 66 Travelalls shared similar grilles, but as best as I can tell the 65 has the vertical slats broken only by the International lettering in the middle, while the 66 has similar vertical slats but also a full-width horizontal piece through the middle. Of course, we have no idea what bits and pieces have been changed over the years. Travelallistas, educate us.
There’s the patina we live for here!
I started this post talking about buying a road trip adventure-mobile, with fantasies of cruising the country in the glorious confines of some old metal. But, ah!, it really is just a fantasy. I’m on record as saying that modern cars just lack much of the style and panache of the old ones, but these old SUVs really are quite spartan. There’s a respectable simplicity inside, but style? Eh, not so much. Not even a radio here and a great big metal dash to bash your brains out on. I’m not that old, but something tells me that logging 16 hour days at the wheel of this would leave me far less ready to enjoy my backwoods camp than anything made in the last 20 or 30 years.
The back seat is suitably spacious though. The kids can be pretty husky it turns out.
Uh oh, this one didn’t fully escape the tin worm. Classic California though: they rust top down and anywhere water collects after a wet winter. The chrome strip along the belt line leads me to suspect this one was originally two-toned there, instead of just the roof getting a separate shade.
Either way, it’s been a long time since this truck (station wagon?) was repainted. It takes a while to get that gasoline filler patina.
So did I buy a classic Suburban or Wagoneer or even a Travelall? No. My practicality, limited though it may be, won this round of dreaming. I did buy a truck, but instead of a 50 year old heap of rust and problems, I spent my three grand on a 15 year old heap of no rust and fewer problems. And I’m glad I did. I have serious doubts I would or could have put 40,000 miles of adventure over the last couple of years on something that old. Dodging potholes on the Dalton Highway is a lot harder when you don’t make it there to begin with. But even in my newer truck, I’m living out the dream of this old International anyway by Travel(ing) All over the place.
Note: a rerun of an older post.
Nice to see one in such good shape .
These, when fitted with a radio, had it above in the dead center, two of our three IHC Travelalls had radios, none were ever turned on, not once .
The deal with these is : they were in fact _trucks_ so not only did they swallow six fairly skinny children and two “adults”, they wore like trucks, this is to say they didn’t wear much at all .
Sadly they also drank fuel like trucks and the steering was extremely heavy .
Apart from getting my hand slammed in a door once (taught me a lesson in 1959 I’ll never forget) I have zero complaints about these, we logged plenty of hard miles all over New England and camped every Summer, big old fashioned “Cottage” tent and all .
Good to hear you’re getting out and about, travel opens the mind, more children / young folks need to do this .
What did you end up buying ? .
-Nate
Ah, the “Husky” clothing size. I didn’t hear the end of that one during my childhood, either.
I remember…
The first person I knew, or at least remember knowing, with an SUV after my high school friend’s parents’ Land Rover 88, was a friend of my Grandfathers with a 1st gen Scout; the second, a colleague that I carpooled with had a final gen Travelall, which he called the Troubleall. It may have been Spartan but we preferred riding in it to his 2nd gen Corolla 2 door. By the way, I don’t recall the term SUV at the time. And the third (a good friend) had a Scout II, while the fourth had an older stacked headlight Travelall. So they weren’t uncommon. All this before the XJ Cherokee and then Ford Explorer took off.
I always liked the low belt line and resulting large windows.
See-through SUVs; not too high overall, low beltline, large windows without tint (certainly not tinted black from the factory) and no headrests. Someone sitting in a sedan behind them could look straight through to see what was going on up ahead.
You sure can’t do that any more today. Everything is huge, small windows that are all limo tint black and these gas hogs are all over the place. Makes driving way less friendly today than it was 30 years ago.
I recall two/three of these sighted around/about my hometown. One, brown..best of memory, was in relatively good shape.
A yellow/gold/white, one was showing quite a bit a rust.
Would a been “67-74-5”, time frame.
I bought an abandoned 1963 Travelall three years ago, looking for a project to tackle. In the years since, I’ve gotten it running. replaced the entire brake system, cut out the cowl to repair the rust underneath, rewired the dash, sourced and reupholstered both bench seats, and installed and then removed a Sniper EFI system, among other projects. I’m just now wringing the travel bugs out of her, working through some brake issues.
I beg to differ with the OP’s take on driving it long distance. Apart from the gas mileage and noise level of an uninsulated steel tube, it’s remarkably comfortable to drive, even with manual steering. I just had the spring packs rebuilt, and that makes a huge difference in road manners. With the original IH 304 and a manual 4-speed, she’s not going to win any races, but she’ll haul or tow almost anything and look real good doing it.
My best friends parents, a school teacher and a Scout leader, were into adventures I could not imagine, as my family stayed in motels. They bought a ’63 Travelall after they nearly destroyed the Buick station wagon on a trip to Guatemala on the then mainly dirt Pan American Highway. Why not a Suburban? Maybe the four doors, but I do remember hearing something about a “real truck engine”. That family was “husky”, so it was a good fit for them.