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Ebay Pick of the Week: 1956 Chevy 3100 Panel Truck with Napco 4WD Conversion


Ebay Pick of the Week: 1956 Chevy 3100 Panel Truck with Napco 4WD Conversion

This 1956 Chevy 3100 panel truck would have qualified as an eBay Pick of the Week even in 2WD form, but with a NAPCO 4WD conversion, this was a no-brainer. It’s wild to think about an era when every truck rolling around on city streets was being used for actual work and those with 4WD were circus-freak rare. In the 1950s if you said 4WD, people thought Jeep, but the Northwest Auto Parts Company (NAPCO) had you covered if a Willys was not your taste.

NAPCO trucks are very rare. One of the reasons is that the cost of the parts and installation of a NAPCO 4WD converstion in the late 1950’s took a stock truck that cost $1,500 new and made it cost a tick under $3,000. There were other smaller vendors of 4×4 stuff at the time, but most Chevy and GMC conversions were by NAPCO because the kits used nearly all GM parts, making the conversion nearly a bolt in. In fact, NAPCO literature of the day claimed that it would only take a dealer mechanic three hours to convert a truck! Try doing a 4×4 conversion in your driveway of today. By the time you’re three hours in, you’ll have about four more to go just to get the front end out.

The truck seen in the eBay auction we spotted is in Arizona, and is packing 235ci straight-six power. The owner makes some fretting sounding refrences to rust. We laugh at his concern because the rest of the country works with iron so rotted from salt and other junk that nothing the desert has done couldn’t be fixed.

There’s still plenty of time to bid on this totally bad ass truck. Make it happen!

Napco Chevy


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