Thursday, June 13, 2019

it's "Seawolf Submarine Green " a factory color, and it's the earliest known surviving Power Wagon... and likely only still exists because instead of earning a living like other work trucks, it was mollycoddled at a university for it's first 3 decades, and that's not a bad thing


the Power Wagon was the simple evolution of the WW2 Dodge military truck with a few mods for civilian life, and they barely had a blip in production before returning soldiers were demanding the same great offroading trucks they'd come to respect which they'd used in all sorts of foreign countries.



this one rolled off the production line on January 28, 1946

The truck you see here is the earliest known surviving Dodge Power Wagon, the 12th built in January of 1946. Its first owner was the Agricultural Engineering Department of Michigan State University. Its duties during nearly 30 years at MSU are unknown, but the truck was sold in the 1970s to an MSU employee who used it for a couple of decades, and then parked it for a couple more.

It ended up in the hands of Michael Mandzak, a product engineering manager for a Big Three automaker, in 2017.

Michael had more or less decided to get it running and driving well, fix the worst of the bodywork, redo the original MSU markings on the door, redo the upholstery, and let the old truck proudly show off its well-earned patina. It generated a great deal of excitement at the 2018 Vintage Power Wagon Rally (vintagepowerwagons.com).

http://www.fourwheeler.com/features/1808-backward-glances-survivor-the-earliest-known-remaining-dodge-power-wagon  tip of the hat to https://dailytimewaster.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-earliest-known-remaining-power-wagon.html

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