http://i460.photobucket.com/albums/qq327/sschevy502/DSC00595.jpg http://i460.photobucket.com/albums/qq327/sschevy502/DSC00577.jpg

Oh yeah, I forgot about the #37 Cattle Truck...nice touch with the rain deer!
Hopefully this will inspire futher discussion of this mystery truck!!!

Reindeer?

Then I looked at the date it was posted.... Christmas Eve '08! :D :D :D

LOL!!!!! What a great pic! All of a sudden I am in the holiday mood!

Some threads take a while to snag...

So which Dodge truck is this modeled after? I don't recall any Dodge COE that looked like this.

That's a good question, one Iv'e pondered and tried to find and can find no evidence of at all.
I'm thinking it was an over-seas only model, but even so, that's just a guess.

I've posted these before, so I'm sorry if they are old news. I love the guzzler series, and since MBX has never updated the stake bed, I decided to do it myself.
94335
As you can see, I had done a little customizing the the bed previously. It came off pretty easily, and with a little glue is a perfect fit for the Guzzler and a nice addition to my parks dept.
94336

That's a good question, one Iv'e pondered and tried to find and can find no evidence of at all.
I'm thinking it was an over-seas only model, but even so, that's just a guess.

This Dodge design was a popular lorry in the UK in the mid weight commercial vehicle arena. I saw loads on the roads in the mid '60's and early '70's. In the UK we call this style of cab Forward Control (FC). It was a home grown design and built in England just like these Matchbox models. However, I never saw a stake bodied version in real life!

Hope this answers your question Lummox and 54belair.

Cheers Chris

This Dodge design was a popular lorry in the UK in the mid weight commercial vehicle arena. I saw loads on the roads in the mid '60's and early '70's. In the UK we call this style of cab Forward Control (FC). It was a home grown design and built in England just like these Matchbox models. However, I never saw a stake bodied version in real life!

Hope this answers your question Lummox and 54belair.

Cheers Chris

I also remember seeing these on the roads of the UK in the 1970s and Australia in the 1980s. However I dont remember the Dodge name appearing on the front before the late 1970s on medium and large vans but that could just be my memory fade.I do remember the previous design truck cab that this Dodge replaced proudly wearing the Commer badge and collecting our refuse at the end of the 1960s until replaced by new Dennis PAX in 1970

Great, thanks for the info Chris.
Do you know the model designation by any chance so I can look it up on the net?

Great, thanks for the info Chris.
Do you know the model designation by any chance so I can look it up on the net?

Here you go Dave:wave:
I can see my memory wasnt so bad - the link shows a photo of one of these Dodge 500s bearing the Commer name, the lowest chassis as used by Lesney for the 37 cattle truck.I have always thought of the early 1970s UK ones as being Commers, which were fitted with the legendary Commer TS3 2 stroke motor, with the total Dodge rebranding coming after 1976 when Chrysler USA decided to drop all Rootes names like Hillman, Singer, Sunbeam and Commer from its european range


http://www.roadtransport.com/blogs/big-lorry-blog/2008/08/the-ugliest-truck-in-the-world.html

There it is!
Nice work Mick, thanks for the linc...mystery solved!
Definately never seen one in the US.

Some threads take a while to snag...

So which Dodge truck is this modeled after? I don't recall any Dodge COE that looked like this.

Thanks, Chris and SMS for the research. I had researched Dodge COE's and came up empty. i never knew that Commer was linked with Chrysler in the UK. It never surprises me how much I learn from others on these boards. One question asked always brings out new information. HT is like the wiki of both the modeling and 1/1 automotive and truck information. :thumbsup:

Thanks, Chris and SMS for the research. I had researched Dodge COE's and came up empty. i never knew that Commer was linked with Chrysler in the UK. It never surprises me how much I learn from others on these boards. One question asked always brings out new information. HT is like the wiki of both the modeling and 1/1 automotive and truck information. :thumbsup:

Its always a pleasure to expand my knowledge of the vehicles behind the castings, and share along the way.
The end of the story of Chrysler´s european adventure came in the early 1980s.All of the Rootes brand names plus Simca of France were dropped in favour of the revival of the Talbot name for cars and Dodge for vans and trucks in the european market.This failed to stem the sales decline, even with a good new small car, the Horizon which was built as the Dodge Omni in the USA I believe........so when Chrylser needed cash they sold the whole european operation to Peugeot, with all the cars being dropped and the best of the factories going over to making new Pug branded designs.
With the 1990s minivan craze Chrysler opened a new factory in Austria to resume european production

Its always a pleasure to expand my knowledge of the vehicles behind the castings, and share along the way.

This failed to stem the sales decline, even with a good new small car, the Horizon which was built as the Dodge Omni in the USA I believe........

Chrysler was into their "corporate twin" branding at this point in the '70's and '80's so there was a Plymouth Horizon and a Dodge Omni. They were introduced with carburetted VW Rabbit engines and VW manual transmissions. The US version had a MacPherson strut front end instead of the European version's torsion bars. They were pretty successful entry-level cars at the time.

The Dodge 500 series was introduced in 1964 and featured a titling cab. It was originally fitted with a Chrysler V8 diesel engine, which was really a Cummins VALE built under licence. This power unit was not very popular so Dodge offered the Perkins V8-410 in response to demand. Perkins was a hghly respected engine manufacturer in the UK. The 500 series ran for thirteen years. Chrysler gained full control of the Rootes company in 1967. Dodge manufacturing moved from Kew to the Commer-Karrier factory in Dunstable in that year. The Dodge name was applied to former Commer models 1976.

Don't forget that the Kew plant built US outline trucks in RHD for exporting to British Commonwealth countries in the late '50's early '60's. These were marketed as Kew-Dodge and Matchbox supplied examples of this cab to the BP Breakdown truck #13 and the dump truck #48. Only a few of this design were actually sold in the UK.

More info eh! Hope it helps.

Cheers Chris

The plot thickens!
Nice additional info. :thumbsup:

Thanks for the additional history, Chris.

-John

That is not a Reindeer, It is just a huge Deer out the Camping MBX Hitch and Haul set from 2008.

That is not a Reindeer, It is just a huge Deer out the Camping MBX Hitch and Haul set from 2008.Trust me SS...... when you post that on Christmas Eve it's a reindeer! :D