They’re part car, part truck, and totally desirable. Here’s a pictorial history of the unique body style known as the sedan delivery.   

 

What is a sedan delivery, exactly? The lines can be blurry, but mainly we strive not to confuse them with their larger siblings, panel deliveries aka panel trucks. A sedan delivery is built on a passenger car chassis and employs a passenger-car derived body, while panel trucks are truck-based. No, the distinction isn’t always clear. For example, Ford and others built both Sedan Deliveries and Panel Deliveries on essentially the same chassis. Oh, well.

Why do we gearheads adore sedan deliveries so much? That might be equally difficult to nail down with precision. They were typically offered in the barest of trim, and with the puniest engines available, so there’s not much appeal evident there. Not in stock form, anyway. Maybe we are attracted to their potential as tow vehicles and parts chasers. Maybe we like them simply because they’re oddballs. All we know is enthusiasts have always been drawn to these not-quite-car, not-quite-truck machines. A small assortment follows.

 

Delivery wagons based on passenger vehicles are nearly as old as the automobile itself—witness the 1904 Olds pie hauler. However, Chevrolet is often credited with offering the first true sedan delivery body style in 1928. This is the company’s offering for 1930, with a 50 hp, six-cylinder OHV engine and a list price of $575.

 

Ford built both car-like Sedan Deliveries and truck-ish Panel Deliveries on the venerable 1928-31 Model A platform—and also 199 of these elegant Town Car Deliveries. Bodied by Briggs, the ’30-’31 Town Car Delivery (295-A) combined elements of a town car, or open front limo, and a panel-style enclosed cargo body, with more luxurious trim than other Model A commercial styles.

 

This 1933 Essex-Terraplane Delivery easily qualifies as a true sedan delivery with its sedan-derived cargo shell. The louvered hood sides identify this as a 73 hp six-cylinder model; the Terraplane 8 employed vent doors.

 

Ford was a leading purveyor of Sedan Deliveries throughout the ’30s, for example this 1937 V-8 Deluxe, which bears the signage of Leon D. Case, Michigan’s Secretary of State in 1937-38. Much of the sheetmetal, including the fenders and front doghouse, is shared with the ’37 Ford passenger car. Ford’s pickups that year sported a different front end.

 

Like Ford, American Bantam in Butler, Pennsylvania produced a town car-styled delivery car, calling its offering the Boulevard Delivery. Around 70 of the dressy little trucklets were built in 1938-39, reportedly on modified roadster bodies and often varying in detail.

 

Through the years, Studebaker was a steady player in the light commercial vehicle market. This 1940 Champion Delivery is as sedan-like as they come, featuring a standard two-door coach body with blanked-out rear side panels in lieu of glass.

 

This 1942 Ford Sedan Delivery is a rare bear, as all civilian vehicle manufacturing was halted shortly after Pearl Harbor. Passenger car-based delivery models would not return at Ford until 1952.

 

Chevrolet was a leading seller of Deliveries both before and after the war. With its sturdy stovebolt powertrain, the 1948 model was very popular with fleet and commercial users.

 

Since Pontiac shared its General Motors A-body platform with Chevrolet in these years, adding a Sedan Delivery model to its catalog was a simple matter of bolting up Silver Streak sheet metal and running gear. Here a local coroner’s office has put a 1950 model to good use. Though production eventually slowed to a trickle, Pontiac offered Deliveries through 1958.

 

When Ford reintroduced a passenger car-based panel vehicle in 1952, the name Courier was attached—1953 Courier shown. Except for the side-hinged rear door, the 1952-56 Couriers (Model 78A) were very similar to their passenger-car counterparts.

 

The 1955 Chevrolet Sedan Delivery took a rather different approach with a one-piece, top-hinged rear cargo hatch. Tri-Five Chevy Deliveries were offered in very basic 150 Series form—note the total absence of chrome side trim.

 

Starting in 1957, some Ford Couriers were produced with rear side glass. Note the sliding panes on this ’58 Courier, which is apparently one of a handful produced that year for use by government agencies. MCG snapped this photo at a Davisburg, Michigan swap meet a few years ago.

 

Is this the sweetest deal you ever saw or what? Here’s a Lark-based 1960 Studebaker Sedan Delivery. The two-piece, clamshell rear gate appears to be shared with the Lark wagon of this period.

 

 In 1960, Ford’s Sedan Delivery ambitions were transferred from the full-sized Ford line to the brand-new Falcon platform. The Falcon-based vehicle was offered through 1965, with the 1962 model shown here being fairly representative. This photo holds some additional Ford lore: Springwells Park is a residential development in Dearborn launched by Edsel Ford in 1939.

 

 In the late 1960s, suddenly ’55-’57 Chevy Sedan Deliveries were wildly popular in NHRA drag racing. It seems a weird oversight in the stock-class rules permitted Deliveries with dual-quad and fuel-injection small-block V8s matched to four-speed GM Hydramatic transmissions. No such combinations ever appeared on any assembly line.

George Cureton, shown here with his Tokyo Rose ’56 Delivery, used the loophole and sharp driving to win the 1967 NHRA World Finals, scoring the first major purse in stock-class drag racing. Other well-known dragging Deliveries included the Jesel Brothers’ Yoo Hoo Too and John Archambault’s Hydrophobia.   –Photo courtesy George Cureton collection 

 

By the 1970s, sedan deliveries had been rendered virtually obsolete by the Ford Econoline, Dodge A100, ChevyVan, and other small vans, which offered far more cargo volume on the same footprint. Chevrolet briefly produced a panel version of the Vega, while Ford offered this Pinto-based panel in 1977-78 called the Cruising Wagon. Note the custom van styling motif, including the graphics and porthole.

 

In the ’70s and ’80s, sedan delivery body styles were red hot on the street rodding scene. This one, the Cranberry Delivery ’28 Ford of Everett Rezendez, won the Ridler Award, hot rodding’s top prize at the Detroit Autorama, in 1980. Another delivery, Ron Barnum’s ’29 Model A, won the Ridler in 1983.

 

The Motor City’s most recent offering on a sedan delivery theme was the 2007-2009 Chevrolet HHR Panel. Design credit for the HHR goes to Chevrolet styling chief Bryan Nesbitt, who’d earlier done the PT Cruiser while at Chrysler. Sales were disappointing and the HHR, in both the windowed and panel versions, was killed in the GM bankruptcy.

To be continued…

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