(UPDATED FROM 2/18/2022)
Five miles up an unpaved road in the Olympic Mountains is a harbinger of today’s stylish trucks. Slowing decaying in the rainforest is a 1962 F-Series pickup. Rather than trying to cart the truck off to a wrecking yard, someone instead propped up the hood with a “Rust in Peace” sign. So far, so good.
I can’t think of a more ironic place for a 1962 Ford truck to die. The rugged Quinault River Valley in Washington state has always had a few rich folks with summer homes, but for decades most residents worked in logging and fishing. For those people, fancy truck styling took a back seat to functionality. This 1962 Ford may have disappointed on the latter front.
Unibody pickups get reputation for flimsiness
Mike Levine of PickupTrucks.com (2010) wrote that Ford had high hopes for its 1961 F-Series, which was given a frame-up redesign that was lower, longer and wider. A major goal was to expand sales to suburbanites by emphasizing a more comfortable ride and a roomier — and quieter — cab.
“Count the hours you’re in a cab . . . and count on Ford for driverized comfort,” a 1961 Ford brochure promised.
Ford also tried to make the F-Series unusually sleek-looking for a truck. Two-wheel-drive Styleside models sported an integrated cab and bed. This was similar to the car-based Ranchero pickup. Ford dubbed the design approach “unibody” — not to be confused with unit-body construction used by the likes of Ford’s compact Falcon.
Also see ‘Still motion: A haunting encounter with a 1940s Chevy truck‘
Ford touted the one-piece cab and box as providing “increased rigidity for longer life, and greater cubic capacity.” The simplified structure also reduced production costs (Levine, 2010). In theory, it sounded like a great idea. In practice, it proved to be highly problematic.
“Stories percolating through the Internet tell of unibody owners who would load their trucks, only to discover that the sills had distorted enough to jam the doors shut,” Levine (2010) stated. “Yet others tell tales of having a fully laden truck twist badly enough to pop a door open when crossing railroad tracks. Age and corrosion only exacerbated issues as the load-bearing bodies began to perforate and rust.”
Ron (2011), a Curbside Classic commentator, wrote that the wrap-around rear window on the top-end Styleside models had a “terrible reputation” for popping out in response to “the twisting and flexing a work truck had to do.” The pictured truck includes the Styleside’s integrated sheetmetal but does not have the wrap-around rear window.
The unibody proved troublesome enough that Ford introduced a separate cab-and-bed model in mid-1962. By the end of the 1963 model year it was outselling the unibody by two-to-one. That was despite the bed coming from the 1960 F-Series, so its sheetmetal didn’t match (Levine, 2010). Not terribly stylish, but quite a few folks apparently didn’t care.
Also see ‘General Motors trumped Ford’s 1962 foray into mid-sized cars’
Ford advertising for 1963 apparently tried to counteract complaints about its trucks by insisting, “Don’t be misled by the smart looks — or the smooth ride. Under the solid comfort of Ford pickups lies solid truck! Wherever toughness counts — in axles, frame, springs, engine — new Ford pickups give you the same kind of durable design as big trucks. The big-truck design means extra freedom from breakdowns and repairs.”
Did McNamara champion a stylish pickup?
I am curious about how such a stylish truck came out during the reign of Robert McNamara. He was Ford Division general manager from 1955-57 and vice president of the Car and Truck Group until November 1960. Then he rose to company president (Severson, 2013) before becoming the defense secretary under John F. Kennedy. While he was at Ford, McNamara presumably had the power to put the brakes on the unibody.
McNamara has often been described as the antithesis of a Detroit “car guy.” For example, David Halberstam noted that he “preferred smaller and more utilitarian cars than those his company was making” (1986, p. 211).
McNamara reportedly marked the Edsel for elimination before it was launched (Bonsall, 2002). The Mercury line was also scaled back. In addition, McNamara considered discontinuing the Lincoln (Severson, 2009). He was apparently more interested in launching a range smaller cars.
Brock Yates (1983, p. 130) described one of Ford’s new entries, the Falcon, as a “mediocre economy sedan” that appealed to McNamara’s “humorless, somewhat Spartan personal predilections.”
However, Aaron Severson (2009) has offered the counterpoint that McNamara had more design taste than is commonly assumed. For example, he championed the legendary 1961 Lincoln Continental.
In addition, McNamara was not single-mindedly fixated on small, austere cars. The “standard-sized” Ford got bigger, heavier and swoopier in 1960 when the Falcon came out.
This raises a question: The F-Series had maintained the utilitarian heritage of the Model T more than any other Ford. Why throw away that legacy by turning the F-Series into a fashion statement?
One reason may have been that McNamara was trying to move Ford away from competing model for model against General Motors and instead focus on emerging markets. Presumably he saw potential in growing truck sales by not just appealing to commercial users.
McNamara may have also been willing to take more risks with the F-Series partly because Ford had embarked on a major product-proliferation spree in the early-60s. The Falcon platform was the basis for a Ranchero pickup, a panel wagon, and a cab-forward Econoline pickup and panel van.
Ford was slow to get back into stylish trucks
Whatever the reason why Ford came out with the unibody, it sold poorly while undercutting the automaker’s reputation. Thus, the body style was dropped after the 1963 model year (Levine, 2010).
Ford got burned badly enough that for years it was more cautious than the rest of the Big Three automakers in giving its trucks a more car-like appearance. For example, GM’s trucks, which received major redesigns in 1967 and 1973, had a more cosmopolitan look than the F-Series.
Even more importantly, the failure of the unibody may have delayed by decades the development of this approach to American truck design. That’s too bad, because integrating the cab and bed can save space — and make possible an opening between the two areas. Chevrolet pioneered the latter with the 2002-13 Avalanche.
Meanwhile, we can only guess why the pickup pictured here was abandoned. The tie-down hooks suggest that this truck did not enjoy a life of frivolity. Might this Ford have stayed on the backroads of Quinault longer if its purchaser had instead opted for the separate cab-and-bed version?
NOTES:
This story was first posted on Oct. 4, 2016, updated on Sept. 11, 2020, expanded on Feb. 18, 2022 and updated on Oct. 10, 2023.
Share your reactions to this post with a comment below or a note to the editor.
RE:SOURCES
Bonsall, Thomas E.; 2002. Disaster in Dearborn: The Story of the Edsel. Stanford General Books, Stanford, CA.- Halberstam, David; 1986. The Reckoning. William Morrow & Co., New York, NY.
- Levine, Mike; 2010. “Looking Back: 1961-63 Ford ‘Unibody’ Trucks.” PickupTrucks.com. Posted Feb. 17.
- Ron; 2011. Commentator in “Curbside Classic: 1962 Ford Styleside F-100 Pickup — That Most Feminine Truck.” Curbside Classic. Posted June 4.
- Severson, Aaron; 2009. “In the Continental Style: The 1961-1963 Lincoln Continental.” Ate Up With Motor. Posted March 1.
- ——–; 2013. “A Historical Note: Ford Division General Managers.” Ate Up With Motor. Posted March 13.
- Yates, Brock; 1983. The Decline and Fall of the American Automobile Industry. Empire Books, New York, NY.
ADVERTISING & PHOTOGRAPHY:
- oldcaradvertising.com: Ford (1961, 1963)
- oldcarbrochures.org: Ford (1961, 1962)
My suggestion is that Ford made a bad engineering decision with the 1962-model “unibody”, which has been documented here. I lived next door for three years to a couple where the husband rebuilt damaged cars into totally “new” cars. He also repossessed cars at night. He drove big Ford F-550 wreckers and F-250 pickups. In one of our over the fence conversations he observed that he had driven Ford trucks since the 1960s, and said that only once had he been disappointed with the truck. He stated that structurally, the Ford pickups were stronger and had thicker steel in the frames, even though he tried other brands before replacing his older Ford trucks with new Ford trucks. I never was aware of the Ford truck “unibody” story.