A ONE-OF-A-KIND car restoration project. “If you consult the history books, you’ll quickly find that Buick didn’t make pickup trucks in 1930. Buick did, however, build a rather jaunty coupe with a rumble seat which was known as the Model 56; one is pictured at right. Somewhere along the way, some farmer or rancher took a Buick Model 56 and replaced the trunk and rumble seat with a pickup bed, ‘kitbashing’ it into a work vehicle. I don’t know if the truck bed came from another vehicle or was scratch-built from sheet metal. I do know that whoever did the conversion was a true craftsman, if not an artist; the bed is integrated with the stock rear fenders so nicely that it looks like it came from the factory that way.”
UPDATE: From the comments:
We think this car was my grandfather’s. I just happened to click on this link through Instapundit today and was interested because my mother grew up in Kim, CO and my grandfather homesteaded there in the early 1900s and stayed in the Kim area until 1955 or so. I just got off the phone with him (he’ll be 97 in a couple of weeks and is as lucid and clear as anyone I know with a memory that is not to be reckoned with!) He is pretty sure it was his Buick that you have in your blog and he did the modifications to it. He told me that it was a “straight 8” and he did the pickup modifications during the war when there was tire rationing. They wouldn’t allow him new tires for the Coupe, but pickups were in demand and if it were a pickup, he could get tires for it. So he drove back to Kim and had the trunk cut off and put a pickup box on it, drove back to Trinidad, CO and applied for four tires and got them! He said that he didn’t put the ‘necker’s knob’ or the fan on, though. Those would have been added after he traded it a few years later for a Hudson!
I am sending him the pictures and the article today to confirm, but he sounded pretty sure that it was the Buick he owned and turned into a pickup. Such a coincidence that I would look at this article – he loves to talk about the past and we just had another lovely conversation and I learned just a little bit more about a man I think is an icon and should be in the history books! I always tell people that if there is anything they should do before they die, it’s to spend two hours with my grandfather. It would be an amazing lesson never to be found in the history books!
Interesting.