Chevy from Spain

[Javier de Luelmo - Diesel]

Hello all, again a long, long time without posting.

This maybe a bit off-topic, but I have seen some comments about spanish Fords and Chevys on our CW, and I thought I could show something interesting I visited in Madrid last year.

These two extra-long Chevrolets from 1937 (sure somebody will identify exactly the model, WB?) formed the "Terminus", the code name for the travelling GHQ used by Franco till the end of the war. One was used as caravan and the other as staff room. They're stored today in the barracks of a transport unit of the army, and generally are in good, running shape. The inside is also well kept, I couldn't hold from laying in the bed, too soft for me... I was there for a while and also felt not very comfortable thinking about the dictator. Anyway, they are very, very interesting vehicles, I was really excited as I had seen a picture when I was a child between my fathers’s books, and maybe one day I will try to model one of them. Hope you like them!

Now if I get the image right...

[Javier de Luelmo - Diesel]

Caravan view

[Javier de Luelmo - Diesel]

The staff room

[David_Hayward (RIP)]

It might be one of the 1938 trucks assembled in the Barcelona Plant of GM Peninsular whilst the authorities were in occupation.

[Javier de Luelmo - Diesel]

Hello David. The Barcelona factory was only taken by Franco troops near the end of the war, so the Chevy must come from another source. I have somewhere a pic of one of the chasis-cowl models built by the anarchist as they ruled the factory along the war. There's also some interesting footage of the "Durruti Column" (Durruti was the strongest and most famous anarchist chief) exit from Barcelona in route to the front in Aragon. The convoy is a motley group of vehicles, but there appear some GM products like Chevrolet and Bedfords (if I remember weel with open cabs and even in 6x4 form!). Will try to find pics tonight.

Franco had a quite big fleet of Ford and Chevrolet trucks. It seems a lot of them were procured through Portugal with the very special assistance of the March Bank (a very well known family from Mallorca), who also had good contacts in America, specially at Ford and Standard Oil, who procured petrol for the nationalist army.

[nuyt]

Hi Javier, encantado,
this is all muy, muy interesante!
So, if I understand you right there were two supply chains of Chevrolets and Fords into Spain:
- the Barcelona factories until the Civil War, working after the start of the war for the republican side;
- the Lisbon connection to the nationalists during the war.
Do you have any information what happened after the Civil War with the Barcelona Ford and GMC plants? Did they import much, did they trade?
Did both Ford and GMC have assembly plants or trading companies in Lisbon?

I suppose you have read this thread:
http://www.mapleleafup.org/forums/sh...&threadid=2206

Hasta luego,
Nuyt

Overvalwagens!

[David_Hayward (RIP)]

I am reliably informed that Chevrolet-based trucks were produced after the take-over of the plant in 1937...the name 'Marathon' keeps coming to mind but someone might know the actual name.

After the war ended the GM plant started up again for a short time but was then liquidated. There was clearly some importation through the Lisboa office of GM Peninsular.

[Javier de Luelmo - Diesel]

Hello Eric and David. Ford, after our war, was still for a time assembling vehicles at Barcelona, but there were a lot of troubles. For a time, there was a quite important number of 1940 model trucks waiting for vital pieces to be finished, but the government was not very helpful with all the paperwork and they remained unfinished for more than 5 years! I have some more info on this episode in an official book, but sadly I have loaned it to a friend in Madrid. One thing that also caught my attention was the very close relation between the Barcelona and Dagenham factories, I remember a number of pics from the BCN factory full of british models like Fordson 7V and the like. Due to all these problems and lack of interest from the government, Ford finally pulled out from the factory around 1945 and was nationalized, although still maintained relations (like later the production of the Ford Thames ET6). GM factory also had to close around 1942. And David, you are right, here it is your Maratón (Marathon). I would have thought the "tinwork" would had more in common with the Chevrolet, but it's quite peculiar to it.

[David_Hayward (RIP)]

I am very grateful for the picture! After WW2 the Government sanctioned imports again and in 1947 [or 1948?] a large number of Vauxhall passenger cars and possibly Bedford Trucks were imported into Barcelona. A photo exists but must find it.

[Bill Murray]

Javier, maybe you can enlighten us on what happened after the death of General Franco in 1975 as it relates to the vehicle park in Spain.

The reason I ask the question is that due to employment with AB Volvo from 1967-1979, I had the opportunity to travel to Spain rather extensively, especially in 1974-1975 when I was based in Sweden and doing a lot of truck spare parts business there.

I was absolutely fascinated by the vehicles on the road at that time, it was like going back into the past in some sort of time machine. Vehicles from the 40's and 50's were predominant of course, but vehicles from the 20's and 30's were to be found on every road and every city in abundance. After that tour, I was sent to Peru for two years and saw a similar situation although most vehicles by far were from the 40's and 50's, some from the 30's and none I saw from the 20's.

After I left Volvo, I joined Saab/Scania and I was not able to visit your country again until the mid 1980's, a gap of some 10 years.
I had promised my American travelling companions a trip down memory lane and they as well as I were looking forward to the same. Much to my surprise, virtually all of those cars and trucks were no longer to be seen anywhere. All modern small cars and trucks, virtually all of them European as opposed to the predominantly American composition of the vehicle park in the 1970's. And.... those cars and trucks were not even to be found in the scrap yards we visited, they completely disappeared.

Perhaps you can enlighten us on what happened and I am sure David would like to know as well.

My only thought is that Spain turned it's back on the past and decided to become "Europeanized/Modernized" as fast as ever possible. I am aware that Spain was rather politically isolated during the Franco regime and assume that was one of many reasons why time more or less stood still for rather a long time.
Sort of like Cuba today, I guess, as I know their vehicle park more or less stalled out in 1959 except for some Russian imports.

Would like to get your input on this.
Bill

[Javier de Luelmo - Diesel]

Like me and lots of friends from here, you have arrived to the same conclusion: we have turned our back to history. Maybe it's just a "iberian illness", that of forgeting or destroying everything that was part of our own history... Some people have a very peculiar idea about what "real" modernisation means. And changing the mind, and the way things are made after such a stormy history as ours, it's quite a challenge.

I'm now 36 years old and have grown up between lots of the more interesting stuff you could think. I remember breaking my pants as a kid inspecting every yard I could go with my bicycle (pity i didn't have a camera at the time!), playing UNDER a White 666, or going back every bar or gas station the family stopped in a trip, looking at strange old things with wheels (or my first Volvo F-88, brand new and covered with a protective, greasy layer?). My own father and grandfather worked with so diverse vehicles like ZIS-5, DUKW (I saw one still swimming for their company in a damm in 88!), GMC 353 and Magirus, as an example. We have had a real travelling treasure up and down the whole country, after that it spent some time under the sun in yards and verges, today it's quite difficult to find some examples of once common vehicles. And as you, I'm horrified about what has happened to it. Only 5-7 years back you could still find a 1928 Chevy, or a Ford BB, a 3-ton Dodge... some of them have been recovered, but the most have gone to the furnaces. Even pieces of our very own motor history like the Pegaso "Mofletes" ("cheeks") or the Barreiros Saeta are gone... two or three survivors in captivity, no more. Sometimes the owners asked too much money for merely a chassis-cab with no engine, axles or the like. Others, there was simply no way to get them. Also, there has been no interest from military and politics to collect and store old army (or commercial) vehicles, or to start AND maintain museums, to encourage the conservation of old vehicles, or to simply to make things easier for the (very few) collectors and get their pride and joy back to the road. Or to listen to people who, like me and friends (we all live in city flats, don't have those nice little homes with garages at the back like some of you!), would volunteer to spend a whole weekend covered in grease and old paint restoring anything, anywhere. I could tell frightening histories about all that stuff... like an army unit burning hundreds of TMs last year as it was living their old barracks to new ones. An officer friend of myself nearly burned his hands trying to recover some of them when he was aware of that (where on earth would you find a near new manual for a Henschel 33...). Or dozens of Dodge Beeps piled along a wall in a garrison (just in front of a friend home, we could see them perfectly) and an bulldozer coming to flat them and put them on trailers to the furnaces...

Now it's too late...

For the military aficionados, our only hope it's a real, new, military vehicles museum in Madrid. The idea was launched last spring, the project memory is ready and, knowing some of the staff who is working on it, if all goes the right track, it's a winner. Will take time to know the solution, but we are keeping crossed our fingers.

Meanwhile I'll try to post some pics with findings in a day or two.

[Javier de Luelmo - Diesel]

Like me and lots of friends from here, you have arrived to the same conclusion: we have turned our back to history. Maybe it's just a "iberian illness", that of forgeting or destroying everything that was part of our own history... Some people have a very peculiar idea about what "real" modernisation means. And changing the mind, and the way things are made after such a stormy history as ours, it's quite a challenge.

I'm now 36 years old and have grown up between lots of the more interesting stuff you could think. I remember breaking my pants as a kid inspecting every yard I could go with my bicycle (pity i didn't have a camera at the time!), playing UNDER a White 666, or going back every bar or gas station the family stopped in a trip, looking at strange old things with wheels (or my first Volvo F-88, brand new and covered with a protective, greasy layer?). My own father and grandfather worked with so diverse vehicles like ZIS-5, DUKW (I saw one still swimming for their company in a damm in 88!), GMC 353 and Magirus, as an example. We have had a real travelling treasure up and down the whole country, after that it spent some time under the sun in yards and verges, today it's quite difficult to find some examples of once common vehicles. And as you, I'm horrified about what has happened to it. Only 5-7 years back you could still find a 1928 Chevy, or a Ford BB, a 3-ton Dodge... some of them have been recovered, but the most have gone to the furnaces. Even pieces of our very own motor history like the Pegaso "Mofletes" ("cheeks") or the Barreiros Saeta are gone... two or three survivors in captivity, no more. Sometimes the owners asked too much money for merely a chassis-cab with no engine, axles or the like. Others, there was simply no way to get them. Also, there has been no interest from military and politics to collect and store old army (or commercial) vehicles, or to start AND maintain museums, to encourage the conservation of old vehicles, or to simply to make things easier for the (very few) collectors and get their pride and joy back to the road. Or to listen to people who, like me and friends (we all live in city flats, don't have those nice little homes with garages at the back like some of you!), would volunteer to spend a whole weekend covered in grease and old paint restoring anything, anywhere. I could tell frightening histories about all that stuff... like an army unit burning hundreds of TMs last year as it was living their old barracks to new ones. An officer friend of myself nearly burned his hands trying to recover some of them when he was aware of that (where on earth would you find a near new manual for a Henschel 33...). Or dozens of Dodge Beeps piled along a wall in a garrison (just in front of a friend home, we could see them perfectly) and an bulldozer coming to flat them and put them on trailers to the furnaces...

Now it's too late...

For the military aficionados, our only hope it's a real, new, military vehicles museum in Madrid. The idea was launched last spring, the project memory is ready and, knowing some of the staff who is working on it, if all goes the right track, it's a winner. Will take time to know the solution, but we are keeping crossed our fingers.

Meanwhile I'll try to post some pics with findings in a day or two.

[Bill Murray]

Javier:

We are getting a bit off the subject of CMP vehicles again but I do have some stuff on Spanish vehicles, pre WWII, WWII and postwar.

Do you know of a site where I can send those photos so that we can see them and not overload this site?
Bill

[Javier de Luelmo - Diesel]

Hello Bill, you are certain. With so many stovebolts and flatheads around the world it's easy to get a bit lost!

We could send material each other by mail, or maybe you could get one of those free websites to pictures online.

I'm part of the crew of the PanzerNet.com website, maybe if you would like and have time we could put there a gallery with pictures and some comments. The website is clearly for modellers, but we have also articles about vehicles and military units. I had the project to open a new forum there for real vehicles, but as actually people prefers to use one of the existant PzN forums (La cantina, the canteeen ) to put images from vehicles or places and get some comments from friends and visitors, we have decided to get along

[nuyt]

Hola Javier and Bill,

You guys are welcome to use the KNIL vehicles forum for showing pre-war Fords and Chevrolets in Spain. No problem.
Here's the link:

http://www.network54.com/Forum/330333

In between WW1 and 2 many US sourced and other vehicles were used throughout this world in various exotic versions. The vehicles were clearly related and often similar concerning chassis and cab. It would be extremely interesting to see more of the Spanish Fords and Chevrolets of the 1930-42 period as well.

Again: be welcome. The forum has been upgraded to take more pictures.

Kind regards,
Nuyt
Overvalwagens!

[Bill Murray]

Nuyt Y Javier:

I will try to get time to post to both sites tonight. Nuyt, will your site "hold" photos now or will it still drop them off after two weeks or whatever the time frame was? Or, I suppose I could email you photos and you can post them in a separate subject thread on the Dutch site.
Please let me know.
Bill

[Bill Murray]

Javier:

My Spanish is pretty good, but I have yet to find the right word to click on to register myself on that site. Can you help?
Bill

[nuyt]

Bill, if you use the temporary files on the Network54 forums the pics will indeed drop off. I have upgraded the forum as to get more space for pictures and I have replaced many of my own posts with a fixed link to a socalled realm on the Network54 area. Now the pics wont disappear (I was struggling with this problem myself). What I understand is that visitors can have their own realms on their free Network54 account as well (though smaller in storage). Setting up such a realm is dead easy and using it to post will work in a split second...
Kind regards,
Nuyt

Overvalwagens!