Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Chevrolet COE tow trucks seem to have been prevalent at many dealerships

4 comments:

  1. Brand loyalty.

    Back in the day, if you sold Chevrolets at your dealership, you would never use a Ford or a Dodge to tow a broken down Chevy in. And like wise for the rest of the auto makers. Nash had Nash tow trucks.

    It wasnt until the late 60's that car carrier companies used other brands to haul the cars that were on the auto rack trailer. Dodges haul the Chrysler family, Fords, the Ford Family... Even Studebakers hauled Studebakers.

    The adage being, if John Q. Public saw his car or truck being towed by some other auto family brand, maybe he should buy his car from that other brand, since this Chevy dealer is using a Ford to haul his broke Bel Air, maybe he should trade it in for a Fairlane.

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    1. Oh heavens, I know that. Ok, my bad, I didn't figure out how to emphasis that it was COE that was more the thing I wanted readers to get from this, than Chevy dealerships used Chevy wreckers... and yeah, I've posted the Nash wreckers, and their story, sometime in the past few months.
      I also thought it very interesting to compare these two, for the triple high bumper, the open vs closed rear wheel openings, and the horizontal vs vertical grills.

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  2. Well one of them is a '46 and the other is a 1952.

    The open back wheel opening might have been because of the area it served (Rochester NY). Snow might get packed up into the wheel well?
    The other one served the greater Los Angles area...

    My take on the COE's is shorter wheel bases on these trucks. And being up higher than anything they may be pushing around with those large bumpers... Look at the Hoselton one, the bumper is all scratched up.

    Did you notice the name of the dealer in the first photo?

    And Hoselton is still around...

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    1. that's a good point about the height, when pushing, it sure would be a blessing to be so high you can see over the car or truck you're pushing.

      Yup, that bumper is scratched up, all that chrome on big American bumpers... I wonder when the first wrecker driver realized it made sense to put an old tire tread across the wrecker front bumper?

      yeah, I saw the names, and got the Mann Chevy photo from a historic LA website... Hoselton is still around? Wow... a lot of dealerships died over the decades

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