When the snow begins to melt in St. Paul, all manner of discarded and forgotten things emerge from the snow drifts along the curb. Flattened plastic soda bottles, stiff single gutter gloves and mangled sunglasses are typical artifacts one might note on a late March midnight stroll downtown. This fat fendered rat was anything but typical and a delightful surprise.
This rat-rod is based on Chevrolet’s 1947-1955 Advance-Design Pickup. It’s hard to pinpoint a particular year, as a rat-rod almost by definition is an amalgam of leftover parts most restorers would have left in the creek bed, but it looks closest to a 1950 as it has vent windows, fuel cap in the passenger side of the cab, a driver’s side cowl vent and the early grille. The rest of the truck is a mish mosh of eras and parts sources. It had no bed floor at all, which revealed a completely custom frame showing off a 3rd gen Corvette IRS retrofitted with a modern airbag setup. I didn’t get a look under the hood but if there was anything but a 350 Chevy under there, I would be surprised.
I know readers of this site are often flustered by the notion of a customized car. Even within the custom car community faux-patina is a subject likely to rile mildly tempered people to violent protest but I think it deserves a spot here. I came about this truck not at a car show, meetup or even a nice warm summer afternoon. This was March, in downtown St. Paul around midnight with the temps barely above 40 and patches of snowdrift still lingering. This was just a guy probably meeting up with his buddies for a beer and this happened to be his ride that night. If I saw it at a hotrod show I probably wouldn’t give it a second glance but in a gray sea of contemporary Toyotas and Kias this was an appreciable departure from the norm. I for one welcome more rats in the city.
I used to live in downtown St Paul. I always loved seeing people getting their “fun cars” out once spring really started going. Every spring the Mississippi rises, and downtown would be inundated by giant rats that were pushed out of the sewers by the rising waters, so that’s what I was expecting in this post… I was pleasantly surprised by the rat rod instead!
Oh, and there used to be a few blocks of downtown roped off to traffic and people would bring their nice cars and park them. It was always cool to see what showed up.
It seems like up until the mid 1960s, about 90% of pickup truck production was split between vehicles painted red and those painted this color of green. My 63 F-100 was one of the green ones, and I personally like them better than the red ones.
If there is such a thing as a generic old truck, this is it. Not because its dull, but because it has that nearly perfect shape that almost everyone thinks of when they think of an old truck.
Grandpa’s ’53 Chevy truck was red, faded pink by the time I drove it. My brother’s early F-100 was green.
When I ordered my ’93 with the fleet manager, one of his data books showed that even in the ’90’s, red was the #2 Chevy truck color, white being #1 by then. Green was not offered that year for full-size pickups.
Niiice! Ive gotten over cars needing to be period correct etc. As I see it this truck was either going to come together beautifully like this, or been scrapped. Not everyone has the funds or inclination to go back to the original. What drives my thinking is here in Cape Town, South Africa, parts for a vehicle like this are pretty much unobtainable locally, and with an exchange rate of something like R14 to the Dollar importing parts from the USA aint going to happen unless the car is really significant.