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The sedan delivery auto body style, basically a station wagon or small van with panels instead of rear side windows, has been around a long time but not so much lately. Ford started building a couple of vehicles using the Model A platform from 1927 through 1931 called the town car delivery and the wood panel delivery. Later, Plymouth, Pontiac, Chevrolet and others built what is generally called a sedan delivery vehicle.
The sedan delivery vehicle was a work truck created by using, in most cases, a two-door station wagon with only front seats and with sheet metal instead of rear side windows. Some models had a rear door like a car door, and some used a tailgate opening like many station wagon models. Chevrolet introduced a sedan delivery model in 1955 with a one-piece top hinged rear lift gate. Up until the 1960s, the sedan delivery was based on the standard size station wagon. In the 1970s and beyond, generally what sedan delivery vehicles were built — and there were not too many — were built on the compact and subcompact platforms like the Ford Falcon, and Chevy Vega. Sedan delivery vehicles were popular with florists, drug stores, grocery stores and official municipal vehicles.
In 1952 Ford introduced their second all-new car model lineup since the end of World War II, and it was a beauty. The 1953 models noted Ford’s 50th anniversary and were a carryover design with very minor changes. The range of models ran from the very inexpensive sedan delivery to the pricey real-wood-panel station wagon.
Generally speaking, because sedan delivery vehicles were work trucks, they were pretty well used up during their lifetime. As a result, there are not many sedan delivery vehicles in the hands of collectors. So, it’s a perfect car for an individual who grew up in Southern California, where kids and hot rods were everywhere.
One such individual is Orinda resident Stephen “Steamer” Stanley, only the second owner of this 1953 Ford sedan delivery. He acquired it in 1984 from the original owner, a Swiss tea merchant in San Francisco.
“That car was the cheapest car off the assembly line,” he said. “It’s what they called a heater delete model. So, there is no heater, no clock, no radio, no arm rests, and only one sun visor for the driver. There is no power anything. The windows are crank, the brakes are the old hydraulic drum type with a single master cylinder.”
The car had a list price of $1,571, or about $14,500 in today’s dollars, minus $74 for deleting the heater, a $683 deduction in today’s dollars. It came with a 215 cubic inch six-cylinder engine rated at 101 horsepower and had a “three on the tree” manual transmission.
The car was rough when purchased for $450, or about $1,095 in today’s dollars. Stanley’s plan was to fix it up, paint it, put his logo on it and use it in his wine wholesaler business. The car was at his Orinda home for about a year-and-a-half, when his house burned down in 1987.
“The car didn’t burn up, but it got so hot that everything blistered and popped.”
The house was rebuilt, and the sedan delivery was moved in and out of the garage for about 10 years before he fixed it up.
“My wife would ask when I ‘was going to get that piece of junk out of here?’ I told her, ‘It’s not a piece of junk; it’s a project.’ ”
In about the year 2000, a friend offered to sell Stanley a 302 c.i. Ford Mustang engine with Ford’s C4 automatic transmission. He bought the engine and transmission and had them rebuilt professionally by a shop in Concord. As for the rest he stated, “We took everything out of the car, sanded it, stripped it and had it painted Toreador Red, a Ford Explorer color.”
Other than the engine and transmission, most everything else is original on this 65-year-old car, even the suspension system. But in addition to the exterior being beautifully refinished, the interior has also been redone to a much higher standard than when it rolled off the assembly line. Stanley reupholstered the two front seats in a cream-colored leather with black floor carpeting. He made the inside door panels and cargo floor from wood paneling. After the painting, he reassembled the car piece by piece and added mag wheels.
Stanley estimates he has invested an additional $15,000 in this project and would guess the current market value at about $25,000 but has no interest in selling. He wanted to keep this vehicle as close to original as possible, so there is still no heater, no clock, no radio, no arm rests and only one sun visor.
The sedan delivery is almost extinct. Probably the last true one in America was Chevrolet’s subcompact HHT, which was discontinued when GM declared bankruptcy in 2009.
Have an interesting vehicle? Contact David Krumboltz at MOBopoly@yahoo.com. To view more photos of this and other issues’ vehicle, search for “David Krumboltz” at www.mercurynews.com.