Yahoo Autos Junkyard Gem: 1937 Hudson Terraplane
In the 15 years that I've been writing about automotive history as viewed through the lens of the car graveyard, the oldest vehicles I've documented were two 1941 Plymouth Special Deluxe sedans (one of which I ended up buying). Oh, sure, I've photographed even older discarded machines, but 1941 was as far back as I had ventured for single-car-specific junkyard features. As of today, though, I've gone four more years into the junkyard past, with an 85-year-old Hudson that showed up in a Denver-area yard a few months ago.
Naturally, I photographed this much-modified Terraplane with one of my many old film cameras, though it was a late-1980s-vintage Ansco rather than one of the New York camera company's products more appropriate to the middle 1930s. Perhaps the 1910 Ansco Dollar or the 1927 Ansco Memo would have been better.
Hudson did make pickups during the 1930s, many of which were sold under the Essex brand, but this truck clearly began life as a regular Terraplane sedan. Someone hacked off the rear body, then grafted on a pickup-cab rear window panel and bent roof sheetmetal down over it to create a not-so-weathertight seal.
There is some not-so-precision lumber work added to make a flatbed.
It appears that some sort of wooden structure was added to the rear of the cab, though many decades of exposure to the elements have rotted much of the wood to nothingness.
