Hooniverse Weekend Edition: The AMC Car Carrier Edition
I just couldn't wait for Truck Thursday
Usually this olelongrooffan tries to produce original content for my fellow Hoons here in the Hooniverse. However, earlier today one of my older brothers, who is also a Hoon, forwarded me a link with a bunch of cool car carriers in it and I had to share it with all ya’ll. I have posted a few more of them after the jump for your Hooniverse Truck Thursday end of the weekend viewing pleasure.
It turns out that MarlinBob’s Uncle Ed was a carrier driver for Rambler/AMC back in the day and he was able to post some images, over on a Rambler based forum, of some the trucks Ed drove.
To me, the cars are as cool as the carriers. Just think if some of those cars could talk the stories they could tell.
MarlinBob provides some ongoing commentary on each of the photos and he mentions this photo is of Uncle Ed’s truck taken from a trailing fellow carrier.
This could also be a Wagon Wednesday post!
Previously, the only place I knew some images of carriers existed was in Fred Gruin, Jr.’s collection over at hankstruckpictures. Well thanks to my brother, the Bus, all of we Hoons get to find out about Uncle Ed’s rides.
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Simply Awesome! Thanks!!
It's strange that I find myself looking at the trucks more then the cars in that picture. Even though I'm an AMC fan they are just some attractive car carriers
Love the GM COE with all of the versions of the GM truck fleet on the trailer. Also, those wagons are beautiful!
Great pics. My favorite car carriers are the Chevy Vega Vert-a-Pac rail cars with the cars shipped hanging vertically. They got 30 per rail car vs. 18 the normal way.
<img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Vert_A_Pac%282%29.jpg"width=500>
Wow. That is all I can say about that pic.
Are there wider shots of this? All I can think seeing this is "No! the roofs are gonna rub when they start moving!"
The old car carriers don't have very many axles. I know the tire technology was no better back then. Did model bloat plus an extra car or two really make them add 2 axles to modern carriers, or is there more to it?
In every picture, you have four to six cars spread over two to three axles, and another car over the cab. Modern carriers are a Tetris masterpiece of up to six cars on a three-axle truck towing six or more on a two-axle trailer. Keep in mind, the mid '80s and the early '90s are the only points where average car weights really went down. But most of the time, from the '40s through today, typical cars were in the 3000-edging-towards-4000 range, with Beetles and Japanese subcompacts and suicide-door continentals as outliers. (Citation needed; I'll try to find that excellent graph.)
Edit: This doesn't go back as far as I want, but you're a hoon of the world. You know that, even in the idealized '50s, cars were not dainty little Fabergé miniatures. The graph is linked to the source, and the source's sources. Also, Google Images's URL search has become one of my favorite tools.
<img src="http://i615.photobucket.com/albums/tt237/jskitter/hooniverse/fotw475.gif">
25% weight reduction in five years is mind boggling. Must be the combination of the second fuel crisis driving people to smaller, more efficient cars, and the redesigns started after the '73 fuel crisis finally coming into production.
Fantastic graph, and find, BTW.
What is the Maroon thing in the first picture? Was there a Vega Van?
Never mind, probably a train car support beam:
<img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b4/Vert_A_Pac_railcar.jpg" width=500>
In the second pic, the bottom center car looks a lot like my '63 American. Thanks for sharing, Longrooffan!