Made From Post-Consumer Parts

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The aerodynamics of a brick and the utility of a Swiss Army Knife. This is one is wearing the optional two-tone paint job. Sticker price? $1195

General Motors and Ford are the big two in the pickup world, with common GM products starting in about 1947, and Ford all the way back to about 1932. Dodges are pretty rare, not only to see restored but just in general back then, right from new. Hudson had a pickup, a big beautiful one. Packard had one as well, a really fancy one. Studebaker had the most modern-looking pickup out there at one time, as shocking as it may seem, where International trucks always felt more traditional and old-fashioned, to me anyway. That’s a lot of people making a lot of pickups when you consider that the Fords and GM’s make up the lion’s share of projects being pulled out of junkyards. One you probably haven’t heard of is the Powell Sport Wagon, and where a lot of trucks end up in the junkyard, every single Sport Wagon actually started there.

Aside from dune buggy and kit car manufacturers, I don’t think a true automotive brand has ever done this. The Powell brothers, rather than spend tons of time and money and resources trying to engineer a chassis, just went to the junkyard and bought one. They chose the 40-41 Plymouth as the base for their soon-to-be Sport Wagon. Although a new vehicle on an old chassis sounds a bit sketchy, they did have the parts gone-through and refreshed beforehand. On top, the Sport Wagon was designed to be an affordable outdoorsman machine. It featured a steel body with no compound curves to cut cost, and a fibreglass grille area. Deluxe add-ons included junkyard chrome trim, and two-tone paint. The windows were sliders to further cut costs, and the hood was a two-piece, side-opening unit, which was a real blast-from-the-past in the middle fifties. The tailgate and entire rear bed section were both made out of heavy checker plate steel, as was the rear bumper. Since the Sport Wagon was based on a car chassis, the body had an integrated bed, rather than the bed being a separate piece. One interesting feature that the bed included that I don’t think any other pickup in history has, is a long slide-out compartment to hold rifles or fishing poles. I’ve seen cars that come with luggage, umbrella holders, golf club pockets, but nothing like this. Sadly, the Powell brothers hardly got started and had to shut down with many orders left undelivered. Not because they ran out of money, and not because of labour issues, but because they ran out of junkyard parts. I guess it was bound to happen, but I kind of wish they’d have kept with it and emptied the junkyards of the next best thing. Not sure what that would have been, or what they would have used it for, but it’s a better way to recycle than just sending everything to the crusher.