Dodge in Malta

[Larry Hayward]

I have attached a photo of a Dodge 'T110' abandoned in Malta in the early 1980's and have wondered whether it was originally a Canadian built military vehicle. The wooden body and the tilt supports look quite military in origin but they don't match any photos I have seen.

From memory I think it had dual rear wheels, which at one time I used to think made it a civilian truck but its quite evident from this web site that dual rear wheels were not so rare.

I would be interested in any information concerning this type.

[Bill Murray]

Evening Larry:
To my tired old eyes, the rear wheels look like singles and it would appear that there is a mirror on the right hand side which would indicate that it is most likely a RHD vehicle which in turn would indicate it is most likely a leftover Canadian Dodgel
Side note, I could not have lined up three woulds if I had tried for hours. Funny, the way it appears when I typed this message, all the woulds ended up one right under the other. Disregard my comment.
Cheers
Bill

[cliff]

I have to agree with Bill. Single rear wheels, Right hand drive ex-Canadian. Body is post war add on in my opinion. At a guess I would say a D60S.

nice find though.
Cliff

[Bill Murray]

Two great minds of a single thought.
D60S would be my guess as well and with some sort of civvie street body hacking.
Bill

[Erwin]

is the truck still there?
Greetings, Erwin

[Nigel Dawe]

Hi Guys,

Surely it's a D15 on 900x16 tyres ?

And Malta is full of old wartime trucks like this. Not always for sale though.

Nigel

[Bill Murray]

I'm going to stick with Cliff on this one for the moment.
Granted, post war modded vehicles like this one with home made rear wings, non standard petrol tank, non standard body and non standardy tyre/wheel equipment are always hard to identify from a photo. Agreed, the rear tyres/wheels do not appear to be 10:50-16s as should be on a D60S but so many things get changed. The front tyre/wheel setup seems to be something altogether different, what little we can see of it.
Also, D15 GS models and a couple of others seem to have always had the spare mounted vertically behind the cab and the D60 models had them mounted elsewhere, either in the cargo area or underneath somewhere.
Just some thoughts.
Bill

[Larry Hayward]

I must admit that when I studied the vehicle it seemed too big to be a D15 though the wheel base did look a little short for a D60L. I did not know about the short three ton chassis at the time so I agree a D60S would be about right.

Looking in Bart's Observers FV Directory I see that the D60S on Page 236 had a dump truck body and dual rear wheels! Was the dump truck the only version to be fitted to the 136 inch chassis?

[Bill Murray]

Well Larry:
One thing for sure, it is not a D60L. From there, a few discussions have been had in this forum earlier trying to sort out the D15 from the D60S.
Not trying to give kudos to anyone in particular, but I think Cliff and Hanno have probably the most extensive collections of info and photos on that range of Dodges that I am in contact with, certainly better than mine.
I generally tend to go with their calls on these types of ID questions.
Oh, I think there were some sort of GS bodies on the D60S as I believe only the dumper had dual rears.
Bill

[cliff]

Originally posted by Bill Murray

Oh, I think there were some sort of GS bodies on the D60S as I believe only the dumper had dual rears.
Bill [/B]

some of the Australian D60L's had dual rear wheels (7.50X20) and these were used as prime movers for semi trailers. Most however had the oversize 18inch single wheels the same as the CMP.

The pictured truck however is not Australian as it does not have the little quarterlite vent windows in the doors. So this, to me, makes it a Canadian made cab.

cheers
Cliff

[Bill Murray]

Cliff:
A. I agree, Canadian.
B. Do you not have in your huge photo library a photo of a D60S bodied as a GS?
C. For that matter, can you post whatever pics you have of D60S vehicles here over time so that we can all make the comparison between the D15 and the D60S.
For whatever reason, I have seen many posts here on MLU and a few on other sites where there always seems to be confusion between just these two variants and, I am no expert and would like to know myself what the key ID points are.
Cheers
Bill

[Richard Farrant]

Originally posted by Bill Murray
C. For that matter, can you post whatever pics you have of D60S vehicles here over time so that we can all make the comparison between the D15 and the D60S.
For whatever reason, I have seen many posts here on MLU and a few on other sites where there always seems to be confusion between just these two variants and, I am no expert and would like to know myself what the key ID points are.

Bill,

The D15 is 8 inches shorter wheelbase than a D60S, 128" against 136". I would put my money on it being a D15, just looking at the balance of it.......and it appears to have 16" wheels, but they could have been changed over of course.

Richard

[cliff]

below is the first page from WM 4121 showing the British Army model types and wheelbases.

Most of the visual ID to which is which is in the size wheel it has on as well as where the spare wheel is located and these are only useful if the truck is original.

the wheelbase is the only true method of determining these trucks as they ALL had the same front sheetmetal and cab (for trucks only and not panel vans etc) or if you can ID the data plate if the vehicle still has one.

All the other features that seperate them are underneath, tucked away out of sight. Different rear axle type, heavy springs etc.
as well as different engine bore sizes.

Also while I have a few pics of these 'D' series Doges and it is one of my most favoured trucks I in fact have very little information and not all that many Photos. I think Hanno has more info then me on this subject.

hope this helps
Cliff

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally posted by Bill Murray
Not trying to give kudos to anyone in particular, but I think Cliff and Hanno have probably the most extensive collections of info and photos on that range of Dodges that I am in contact with, certainly better than mine.

Bill, I'd say it's a D15 but I'm not really the man on this subject. Over to you, Cliff!

H.

[Bill Murray]

Hmmm.
Well, there are more voting for D15 than D60S and I sure don't have a definitive answer.
Guess we all need to get into a time capsule and rocket back to Cyprus in the eighties and find the truck and look at the data plate

Bill

[Larry Hayward]

Malta was and still is an amazing place to spot old vehicles. I was there in 1964 and when I went back 20 years later the same old cream & green buses were still in use! However time is running out. As Malta is now in the EU (!!!!) all those old types with bald tires, poor brakes and smoking engines are going to get scrapped under the weight of EU safety & emmision laws that now threatens the UK vehicle preservation movement.

The oldest truck I saw still working in Malta in 1984 was this truck hauling grain sacks. It looks like a Ford V8-51 but I'm not up on prewar US trucks. The photos a bit out of focus as it was a quick shot out of the front on one of those old buses!

[Bill Murray]

Ah David:
Such memories your post brings back. I was ever so fortunate in my days with Volvo to get to travel to, amongst other countries, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Turkey in the 1960's and 1970's and later most of the South American countries in the late 1970's.

Compared to Western Europe, where so many prewar vehicles were destroyed in the war and the Middle East where cars were not heavily imported until well after the war, those countries vehicle parks were a living museum on wheels. Literally thousands of vehicles from the 1920's through the early 1940's were still in daily use. One of my favourites was a 1934 Ford Phaeton used as a daily taxi cab that passed by my office window in Lima, Peru almost daily. Once the war was over, it seems their limited access to foreign exchange prohibited the importation of post war vehicles and the pre war ones just soldiered on and on and on.

Certainly a testament to the standards to which those vehicles were built as compared to the throwaway, disposable vehicles produced from, say, the 1960's.

I cannot speak to other countries strategies, but when I revisited Spain in the mid 1980's, after the death of Franco, I could find almost no cars of any age older than a few years on the road.
My then, Saab, contact there said that the new regime determined Spain would become a producer of cars and trucks and not an importer. They started up a system similar to the British MOT and basically got rid of all of the prewar cars and trucks. The citizens of Spain were then more or less forced to buy new, cheap Spanish produced vehicles.

As a side note to encouraging local production and consumption, Japan had a similar policy at about the same time. This may a little bit of urban legend, but my Japanese contacts of the time said that the 2nd and I believe 3d year MOT virtually guaranteed that it was not cost effective to bring a car or truck up to the standards. As I was told, such mundane things as shock absorbers, fan belts, total lighting systems etc. had to meet new factory specs or had to be replaced. Since this was not cost effective for the owner, they purchased a new vehicle. The used vehicles were apparently disposed of through a system that if not run by the Government was at least supported by it. The end result was a flood of relatively new vehicles that were exported throughout Asia, Africa, the Middle East and South America at relatively low prices. Given that the Japanese were already producing some pretty high quality vehicles, that gave them a "beach-head" so to say in establishing their brands in those areas and, well, as they say, the rest is history. Japanese brands dominate in most of those countries to this day.
Almost forgot, I think your ID of a V8-51 is correct.
Bill

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally posted by Bill Murray
Guess we all need to get into a time capsule and rocket back to Cyprus

Cyprus?!? Don't get me started, I lived there as a small boy and I was infected by the "green machine virus" there, if not by the multitude of British vehicles operating under the UN flag, it was because of playing in the derelict jeep standing on the roadside near a friend's house...

I read that splitting up the country in Turkish/Greek parts left a Toyota car dealership in the demilitarised zone, reportedly there a still a number of brand-new 1974-model cars in the showroom!

H.

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally posted by Larry Hayward
Malta was and still is an amazing place to spot old vehicles.

See Military Vehicle Collectors’ Club Malta for a view of some of the gems surviving.

[David_Hayward (RIP)]

Hanno, I too head heard that there was a dealership on the Green Line, alhough I would have thought that all the stock had been pilfered years ago?

There used to be a 1974 Holden Ute in Southampton, white with a red or ornage kangarro symbol on the tailgate...apparently this was one of the Australian UN vehicles that someone acquired.

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally posted by David_Hayward
Hanno, I too head heard that there was a dealership on the Green Line, alhough I would have thought that all the stock had been pilfered years ago?

I read an account of a journalist who visited the Green Line a few years ago. I had an interest in reading the article because I lived in Cyprus. This journalist could visit the area as he was allowed to go on patrol with the soldiers guarding the border zone. He sketched a picture of houses left in a great hurry, with plates and cutlery still on the table just as it was left decades earlier. He was surprised to see the brand new, though sun faded, cars in the showroom. But apparently nobody is allowed to take anything from within the Green Line zone because of ownership disputes - no exceptions.

On the other hand, there are plenty of examples of things passing into new ownership involuntary. My mother told me old friends of her, while serving with the UN with the British military, bought a small cottage while stationed at Dekhelia. The house was “repossessed” in 1974 without reimbursement, quite a loss at the time. Just recently their son, as a surprise, bought that very same house, again!

H.

[Larry Hayward]

I've attached shots of a few other MV's seen in Malta, which may be the ones now with the Military Vehicle Collectors’ Club Malta.

[Larry Hayward]

And this one:-

[Larry Hayward]

But I don't think this Matador at Kalafrana survived, as the cab was burnt out!

[Larry Hayward]

After Malta I went to Crete and saw this much modified CMP, which I guess is or started out as a Ford F15A 15 cwt truck. Whether it arrived before or long after the Battle of Crete I don't know!

From Crete I went to mainland Greece. Now there's a country that was littered with CMP's in the hills and off the main roads! If only I'd had........the time, money and foresight to do something to save them!

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally posted by Larry Hayward
After Malta I went to Crete and saw this much modified CMP, which I guess is or started out as a Ford F15A 15 cwt truck.

Larry, I went to Crete in 1997 and ran across a similarly modified F15A. It had dual wheels and a diesel engine fitted.


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