While on an afternoon trip to the local home improvement mega-store we nearly drove off the road when we spotted this awesome ’42 Chevy truck parked outside a little local watering hole.
We can say that it is an effective tool to lure in customers because after snapping the photos we went in for a frosty. Seriously.
But back to the truck. Chevrolet produced just over 23,000 of these half-ton trucks back in ’42 so this is a fairly rare piece considering how many have been lost to wear and tear, the elements, and human error. They are great looking trucks with their prominent front and rear fenders and a two-piece grill that is so close to being ugly it’s beautiful. The 1942 trucks also represent the last year of production before the government halted civilian truck production so the plants could be converted to aid the war effort.
Sensing an actual, legitimate excuse to drink beer, we went in and tried to find the guy who owns this piece. It’s the bar owners rig and despite our waiting through two beers we never got the chance to speak with him.
From crawling around the thing we can say that the body sits on a modern chassis and has had its probable Stovebolt mill replaced with a venerable small-block Chevy. The classic faux wooden beer cases complete the look in the bed. We dig the plain old Rally wheels as well. Having the lettering done in a more classical hand-painted style would have put this thing way over the top of the cool scale, but sans beer cases we’d roll in this thing every chance we got.
Since we missed the owner on this visit, the only responsible, journalistic, thing to do would be to complete another “fact finding mission.” This time we’ll stay until we find him, even if it takes all night.
