There are many different ways in which you can know someone. Take Bobby. Although I went to church with him, I never knew him to be a car nut. Anyway, I was driving by this place when, suddenly, three very interesting cars aroused my automotive senses. I went up to introduce myself to the guy standing outside the shop, and who does it turn out to be but Bobby!
Since I found a ’41 Dodge business coupe a couple of months ago, I thought I’d lead off this three-part article with its Chevrolet counterpart. Not all business coupes are the same, as you’ll discover.
The most prominent feature of the Dodge business coupe was its very prominent rear end. In some instances that can be a desirable trait, but when it comes to cars it’s not one I find very endearing. I’m using a Google image to help illustrate the difference between it and the Chevy below. Obviously, the Chevy put a lot of that trunk room into the cab, so I guess I’d take the Dodge for carrying something unpleasant. On the other hand, if a car’s big rear end was what I found unpleasant, I’d go with the Chevy.
Business coupes were built on a sturdy frame. This car weighs 3,050 lbs. In contrast, my ’57 wagon, with a 283 and Powerglide, has a title weight of 3,600 lbs. In fact, its title weight is 50 pounds heavier than that of my S10–or as Ed would say, equal to 1.875 Volkswagens. Even at that not-so-svelte weight, the Chevy looks downright anorexic compared with the Dodge. Usually, early coupes were popular among drag racers because of their light weight, but apparently someone forgot to tell Chevy.
The original engine was a 90-hp, 216-cu in six, mated to a three-speed manual transmission. To get those 90 horses, the engine featured 6.5:1 compression (110 psi when running) and, for protection, 14-psi oil pressure. It was called the Victory Six, but probably not before December 1941 at the earliest.
Chevy was pretty proud of their product. At least I think so. Strangely enough, none of the ads I referenced for this article included a picture of a Chevy business coupe.
Bobby says the Goodwrench 350 and 700R4 do a much better job of moving one-and-one-half tons than the original stovebolt six–and claims he gets 25 mpg on the highway (my own truck, with its 4.3-liter engine and near-identical weight and transmission, returns 22 mpg).
When it came to 1941 Chevys, this was the bottom of the food chain: a two-passenger, five-windowed transportation device designed for salesmen.
All ’41 Chevrolets rode on a 116-inch wheelbase, up three inches from the previous year. Passenger comfort was not exactly a high priority for the designers.
Chevy’s business coupes came in two trim levels. At the bottom was the Master DeLuxe, which is what Bobby’s coupe appears to be. I can’t be certain because its trim and upholstery could well have been updated since this car was built 71 years ago. Chevy made over 66,000 of these not-so-little coupes, whose 1942 production run was interrupted by a bit of unpleasantness called World War Two.
I’ve always enjoyed cars of this era, which weren’t all that old when I was first becoming aware of cars. In fact, my second car was a 1946 Chevy with the same old stovebolt six. I’ll get to Bobby’s other cars as quickly as I can. Hope you enjoyed looking at this one as much as I did.
As a true aficionado of car aesthetics, I always have loved coupes. The staid practicality of the four-door never appealed to me, even when I was rearing kids and had to have one.
That is a sweet ride. I’m a little tired of the Matte Black “Murdered Out” fad but it works on this car nicely with the Red interior bits and exterior accents (that and looking Professionally done rather than saying it with Krylon helps) .
+1
Hey, it’s another “center cab” design! (c:
I’m very partial to this genre of cars myself, either just pre-war or just after.
Ahh, the ubiquitous Chevy Rally wheels again only coupled with every modification I would never consider doing…BLECCH.
Looks like beige thing #2 is sporting ’77 Monte Carlo wheelcovers, not near as nasty..
That Dodge has some kind of bubble-butt, wow.
Strike three: I’m out.
Hmm. The feature car is good-looking but I have a strange urge to run my hands over the back of the Dodge. Still, nothing quite beats the early postwar Cadillacs for curves and, uh, hip-to-waist ratio.
You will have to drop by Google to run your hands over the Dodge or the beige Chevy. I think the next one of Bobby’s vehicles will do a better job of interesting our readership. You get a glimpse of it in the engine compartment picture.
Could someone explain to us not so steeped in classic cars what this “Genuine Knee Action” the ad mentions is?
In this case I believe they are referring to knee action shocks that was a lever action shock that also formed the upper control arm or link of a coil IFS. That in other cases was referred to as open knee action front suspension. On earlier Chevys it was an integrated unit that had an enclosed coil spring and a lever that was the spindle.
It also is used to refer to a basic lever action shock that does not locate suspension components.
Here is an open knee action front suspension, that I believe would be similar to the subject car.
Here is the “knee action” unit.
Thank you for the detailed explanation. Learned something new today! I don’t think I’ve ever seen this kind of suspension design. Of course almost all modern cars have mcPherson struts up front…
I thought the phrase had something to do with the driver’s knee… 😉
Actually the first generation US Escort/Tempo was the last common car to use a true McPherson strut front suspension. The key defining and one of patented parts of McPherson’s design is the fact that the lower locating piece is an arm with one connecting point to the vehicle with the fore and aft location achieved by a sway bar connected near it’s mid point.
In many ways though the Knee Action front suspension I showed above shares some similarity to a strut style suspension since the both combine the shock and upper suspension location device into a single unit. Where they are different is that the McPherson strut also incorporates the upper pivot point that allows steering too.
Here is a true McPherson strut style suspension from the original UK Escort.
The original “Knee-Action” front suspension was a Dubonnet design that Chevrolet adopted for 1934, bus soon discarded because of oil leakage from the integral shock absorbers. Here’s a very good explanation article, and the picture below shows it to be a trailing arm, not totally dissimilar from the VW front suspension. The big differences were the coils springs and integral shocks. http://www.obrasmechanicos.com/dubonnet.htm
I can only imagine the kind of self-satisfied laugh Henry Ford must have gotten out of the Chevrolet system’s combination of high cost, high complexity and high failure rate. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. This was one of those times.
Yes, Henry wouldn’t touch an ifs with a ten foot pole.
About the long rear end/trunk on business coupes. Think 1930s-1940s-early 1950s. Salesmen, heavy samples, small towns and cities not amenable to constructing a route schedule by train. One man, one car, all his samples and order materials cruising small town Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia: four months a year.
I am 70 and watched my Uncle Ted Olson hit the road twice a year on this kind of route with wallpaper and wall covering samples from Chicago to the states above, he needed that space. He preferred Chevrolets.