Originally Posted by west9378 (Post 8866282)

after all these years and just about to replace the floor on a 71 and I read this laughing till I cried. The shifter questions continued to be a focus to many that I completely overlooked till I read the post questioning its placement.
the idea of the demo or show truck would lead me to believe the whole truck would have been wood vs just the bed.
The shop teacher could be the builder the wood could have been paid for out of the school budget so he just saved thousands and the labor each kid had a piece that he or she was graded on so labor was free. And the shop teacher and the automotive teacher did a swap on the bondo paint for a new set of cabinets again on the tax payer nickel.
Love this wish I had it but what would I do with it?
Thanks for the Laughs

Originally Posted by '68OrangeSunshine (Post 7344922)

Here's my guess: I am a Stagehand. Had my card for 28 years. Besides legitimate theater, touring shows, operas, ballets and rock 'n roll, we also do exposition work at trade shows. Not just setting up the boothes, tables and carpet, but also installing displays in certain clients' boothes.
Sometimes we get to take home stuff the client
wants to discard after the event. It's called "swag" in the trade.

Originally Posted by '68OrangeSunshine (Post 7344922)

My guess is there was a big auto show in Vegas [in the late '60s] and the wooden mockup for the "New Breed Truck" was in the booth. When the show was over the clients [GMC, Chevy?] didn't want to ship the bed back to Detroit, so they told the stage hands to tip it in the dumpster, and caught a plane out of town. But one of the locals had a better idea and swagged it...
Mystery over.

Originally Posted by '68OrangeSunshine (Post 8866319)

'67 Model Year was pivotal. There may not have been a production example for a Fleetside in metal yet -- Mid 1966 ? -- when they needed a mock up for a big Vegas car show. Skilled Detroit fabricators could knock out what they called a ''Buck'' in very little time. Then it was mated to a Cab/Frame, and airfreighted to McCarren Field. Show over, it was ''acquired'' by a local stagehand [or Teamster] and stayed in Vegas.

Originally Posted by Keith Seymore (Post 8866538)

I agree.





I realize this is all in fun, but - I can't imagine this scenario playing out.

The industry uses clay (over a Styrofoam armature) for the design studio activity, and fiberglass if it is going to move at all.

The "car" shown below is a fiberglass mockup mounted to a square tubing framework to allow it to be rolled straight forwards or backwards (it doesn't steer).

Plus - the timing doesn't work. We have driving, representative prototypes three and four years ahead of production, well before we would be sending properties to a trade show.

It's way easier to make a metal bed than it is the complexities of a pickup cab. It would be relatively easy, inexpensive, and short lead time to create soft tools (kirksite dies) and bang out ten or twenty bed side panels for prototype and show usages.

K

Originally Posted by toms68cst (Post 9266672)

I wonder what the guy running the crusher thought when that poor truck finally met its doom.