Volkswagen’s small Sort 2 Transporter vans and pickups offered surprisingly nicely in the USA through the late Nineteen Fifties; Detroit took be aware and started working by itself competing designs. The Transporter had a usefully flat flooring, achieved by placing a boxer engine within the rear, and Common Motors copied this structure with the Chevrolet Corvair van and pickup, which debuted for the 1961 mannequin yr. Ford was prepared with a Transporter rival that yr as nicely: the Econoline. Most 1961-1967 Econolines offered had been vans, however a pickup model hit American streets as nicely. I’ve discovered one in all these now-rare pickups in a family-owned boneyard within the Colorado Excessive Plains, and it has tales to inform.
The primary-generation Econoline managed to get a flat flooring and enormous cargo space on a brief wheelbase through the use of a forward-control design with a conventional water-cooled engine situated beneath a “doghouse” between the entrance seats. This structure wasn’t so nice for occupant consolation or freeway street manners, however proved exceptionally helpful for maneuvering heavy hundreds down obstacle-course alleys and sidling as much as cramped loading docks. The early Econoline vans offered like mad; beginning with the 1964 mannequin yr, GM and Chrysler adopted swimsuit with related forward-control vans (the ChevyVan/Handi-Van and Dodge A100).
GM did not hassle to make pickup variations of the ChevyVan/Handi-Van, although the Corvair Rampside pickup held out by 1964. Chrysler offered pickup variations of the A100/A108 by 1969.
The unique Econoline’s chassis was developed from that of the 1960 Ford Falcon (which makes it a cousin to the first-generation Mustang), and a few Econoline passenger vans had been offered with Falcon badging. In Canada, Econolines acquired Mercury badges.
The guarantee tag tells us that this truck has a 90-inch wheelbase, is painted in Caribbean Turquoise, was assembled on the Lorain Meeting plant in Ohio and offered by the Salt Lake Metropolis district gross sales workplace.
As somebody who got here of automotive age through the early Nineteen Eighties within the San Francisco Bay Space, this sticker on the sprint is very acquainted to me. KOME was a San Jose FM station that broadcast the sort of onerous rock and sexual innuendo that paired nicely with Detroit V8s barking by open headers through the late Seventies and early Nineteen Eighties. I listened to KOME in my hooptie ’67 GTO and I had one in all these stickers on my highschool locker. This van will need to have lived within the Bay Space for some time again then.
If an Econoline pickup had a manufacturing unit radio, it could have been a single-speaker AM-only kind. The proprietor of this truck remedied that downside by putting in this aftermarket FM/cassette underdash unit, most likely within the late Seventies. Do not contact that dial, it is acquired KOME on it!
This sticker on the rear glass seems to be an early-2000s-vintage one from TRI 102 in Loveland, Colorado. The collector-car license plates date from the center Nineteen Eighties or so. All of those clues counsel that this truck was born in Ohio, offered in Utah, moved to California sooner or later earlier than the early Nineteen Eighties, then migrated to Colorado a bit after that and stayed in service till no less than the early a part of our present century.
This engine seems to be of later classic than the 170-cubic-inch (2.8-liter) Thriftpower straight-six that was on this van at its beginning, nevertheless it’s a member of the identical household. 1961-1967 Econolines by no means acquired factory-installed V8 engines, though many such swaps have been carried out by homeowners.
The transmission is an efficient outdated three-speed column-shift guide, identified colloquially as a “three-on-the-tree” and accessible in new American pickups nicely into the center Nineteen Eighties.
There is a Datsun B210 Honey Bee hubcap within the mattress.
For the 1969 mannequin yr, Ford moved the Econoline onto the F-Collection truck chassis, giving it a front-engine structure within the course of. GM and Chrysler did the identical with their vans quickly after.
These vans are value good cash when in good situation. This one seems to be too rusty to be value restoring, sadly.
All the best way new, to avoid wasting 4 huge methods!