Video: Was This Truck Unsafe?

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This brief but eye-opening film clip illustrates how much the auto industry has changed since the early 1960s.

 

This video clip is a brief excerpt from a 1963 Chevrolet sales film produced by Jam Handy and titled Decision at Daytona. (You can view the video in full here.) As we saw it, the most eye-opening portion of the film doesn’t include any Chevrolets. Instead, a pair of trucks from the competition are featured, namely the Ford Econoline pickup and van (first generation, 1961-67). And these trucks are displaying some rather disturbing dynamics under heavy braking, standing on their front bumpers with their rear wheels several feet off the ground, as shown above.

Upon seeing this video, modern-day viewers may well be asking themselves, “Was this truck unsafe?” Actually, we need a different question. First, “unsafe” is a relative term, not an absolute point on a chart. All vehicles are potentially unsafe, just like your driver’s ed instructor said. Meanwhile, the handling properties of light trucks like these were widely understood at the time, and no, they weren’t sports cars. For the most part, the more weight you loaded in, the better they rode and handled. And when they were empty, they weren’t very good at all. It was typical for users to carry several bags of sand or concrete mix in the back to even out the weight distribution. Early in the production cycle, Ford added a 165-lb iron plate under the cargo bed to serve a similar purpose, presumably in response to customer feedback.

For us, the real takeaway is that 1963 was a long time ago, and times have changed. No manufacturer would offer a vehicle to the public with these handling properties today. You couldn’t find an engineer to sign off on such a thing, and the addition of 165 lbs of dead weight as a proposed fix would, all by itself, raise eyebrows all over the company. Design and safety standards are far higher now than they were in the ’60s, and that’s a very good thing for everyone, especially car buyers.

The video shows one more way the auto industry has changed since the early ’60s. These days, we can’t imagine any auto manufacturer attacking a competitor so openly and aggressively in public. The company’s legal department would have a stroke, and it also brings to mind the old adage about people who live in glass houses. All the automakers are challenged with safety questions from time to time, and they surely always will. Anyway, check out the video.

 

12 thoughts on “Video: Was This Truck Unsafe?”

  2. I carried two bags of cement in the bed of a Dodge A100. They were permanent.

  3. Yup, I had an old truck tire inner tube filled with sand in the back of my El Camino. Under load, the car/truck rode like a Cadillac.

  4. Hmmm, they neglect to you that the cargo area is blocked up with a engine. A large counterweight! No flat floor there.
    And those Corvair vans and utes were far more susceptible to falling over than the cars
    Though going back to the 80s and 90s many manufacturers sold cargo vans with added seats as people movers. While not quite as bad as the Ford shown they were still very dicey. Even as a work van. There used to be plenty of them in the wrecker in that period.
    Even now the vans and utes used are far from ideal. As well as SUVs etc.
    But manufacturers stopped making practical passenger cars and wagons.And worse most left are front drive.

  5. Trucks doing “stoppies”, nice. The real skinny on this was, I read, it was a propaganda film of sorts, from GM, and what they didn’t tell you, is they had 500 pounds of ballast in the front of the Fords.

  7. HS buddy had a 66 Econo line . 3 on the tree 7 ft long shift levers got stuck in 3rd alot . The ill handling beast got rolled in the rain .

  8. The way to handle that was to put the engine in the bed like the Lil’ Red Wagon Dodge A100. Then you had the new problem of keeping the front tires on the ground, LOL!

  10. also the Chevy Greenbriar was rear engine like it’s car version the Corvair. Not a fair comparison

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