Tag: HISTORIC

It’s 1973. The party is over, the music has died (except for the shop behind Pontiac’s main office, where you can still hear some early heavy metal blasting.) You’ve got a front row seat for the first oil shock, the 1973 OPEC crisis, and the only thing you stand to move with any kind of hope are your smaller, compact cars. You can’t rely on sporty and powerful anymore, especially when you are now going to have to be better at explaining the virtues of a platform past the common “it’s a good value” line. Good value? How? What makes Car A a better value over Car B? What do you get for your dollar’s worth, and is it worth the effort or time to buy new instead of just holding on to that trusty (if rusty) thing that has been shuttling you back and forth for years now?

The Dodge Dart Sport, the car that had been the lithe Demon before religious groups got their knickers in a twist, was one of Chrysler’s best hits of the 1970s. Plymouth had re-skinned their Valiant into a handsome coupe shape and Dodge had gotten their copy of the bodyshell to use, and they sold. The Duster 340 and Demon 340 were junior supercars that could give you a thrill, but with the 340 gone and the 360 that replaced it was only competent, not as wild as before. So, back to that trick that will bring buyers into the showrooms. How about a fold-down rear seat?

Yeah, that’s no joke. The “Convertriple” option for 1973 and 1974 was supposed to fuse three cars into one: an economy compact that had the open roof feel of the convertible (really, a manually-operated sunroof) and a fold-down rear seat that morphed the car into the station wagon. You can go ahead and roll your eyes, we understand. Just as you can understand why hearing a group of young ladies losing their minds over a fold-down rear seat is smirk-inducing.

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For starters, holy cow did these fellows have guts! Tasked with recovering a disabled tank that was sitting by itself well off the road and away from the protection of a convoy, a small group of men ventured over to the broken Crusader Mk II tank with a lumbering monster of a truck and set to work loading it. Soon after they start working to winch the tank onto the truck, explosions in VERY close proximity to where they are begin. The men dive to the ground and wait them out before going back to work again. They are met by more explosions, even closer this time. We then see the truck with the tank on its back creeping back toward the road with shells hitting mere yards from it. The final shot we see is so close that the whole truck is obscured by the dirt and dust. The camera guy must have been shaking in his boots as well!

Outside of the sheer bravery shown by these British soldiers, the truck caught our eye. Looking like something straight out of the Mad Max movie (but moving at a pace slightly slower than a tortoise, especially when loaded) is a British built Scammell Pioneer rig. This was the Semi-trailer version of the truck which was a bigger, beefier version of the standard issue Pioneer which was used to tow heavy guns, had a wrecker type setup that was used on it, and found use in virtually every theater of the war that the British fought in. The Pioneer Semi-trailer truck weighed about 22,000lbs with the trailer and was just under 40 feet long. The trailer could not be simply unhooked from the truck so they were essentially a one piece unit. Power was derived from a 501ci inline six diesel engine that made a whopping 102hp. As was always the case, torque was the name of the game and while the engine made some, the 18mph top speed meant that it needed lots of gearing help as well. The good news? It could go 430-miles on 54 gallons of fuel (unladen). Hopefully there were team drivers because at 18mph, 430 miles would take 24 hours, give or take pee breaks. 

All kidding aside, these guys were literally yards from catching one of those shells and they didn’t run, didn’t take off screaming, and got the job done. Even while they lumbered away they were not completely out of harm’s way as evidenced by the final closing seconds of the scene where a shell lands and explodes just to the back of the truck. We hope all the guys in this video lived long and happy lives after leaving the war effort and heading home. They certainly earned it.

PRESS PLAY BELOW TO SEE THIS AMAZING FOOTAGE STARRING THE BRAVE SOLIDERS AND THEIR HUGE LUMBERING TRUCK –

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