What is it about cabover trucks that makes them so appealing? Mac’s Motor City Garage takes a look at these oddly attractive workhorses.

 

It makes no sense. From a strictly aesthetic point of view, cabover trucks should not be considered attractive. Their lines are grotesquely stunted and their proportions are all wrong. Yet we gearheads love their looks. MCG has yet to meet a car guy or car girl who doesn’t find these ugly ducklings completely fascinating.

Maybe they’re so ugly they define their own kind of handsome, like a Gee Bee aircraft or an English Bulldog. Or maybe we find charm in their pure functionality. The cab-over-engine layout—COE in trucker jargon—was originally designed to squeeze another foot or two of cargo capacity out of the strict road-length regulations in place at the time. And you know what they say: Beauty is as beauty does.

Who can say why we find cabovers so compelling. But we sure do. Here’s a brief rundown.

 

In a general way, the cab-over-engine configuration is as old as the motor truck itself—as in the earliest self-propelled road rigs known as motor wagons. On this 1912 Reliant GMC, the seat is mounted directly atop the engine house. Great in the winter, not so great in summer, we bet.

General Motors got into the truck business when it acquired the Reliant and Rapid brands, merging them to found the GMC division in 1912. We won’t call this a true cabover, however. Um, there’s no cab.

 

Truck historians often point to the 1931 White C41 as an early example of a cabover rig in the modern idiom: stubby, all-weather cab positioned directly over the powertrain. Founded in Cleveland in 1900, White Motor Company was an early manufacturer of steam automobiles, evolving into a heavy truck maker after World War I.

 

Chicago truck maker Nelson & LeMoon was founded in 1910, with the name shortened to simply LeMoon in 1927. Speaking of shortened: This 1936 tandem-axle cabover wears the signature LeMoon peaked radiator shell, though the hoodless body shell gives it a pug-nosed look.

 

Studebaker’s 2M625 COE for 1936 sported a distinguished look with its sedan-like grille and other styling cues. The beverage box carries the signage of John Hohenadel Beer, an extinct Philadelphia brand.

 

A new design for 1938, the Ford COE shared its distinctive oval grille shell with that year’s conventional long-nose truck. This tandem-axle chassis is fitted with an on-board concrete mixer system (aka transit mixer) powered by an auxiliary powerplant behind the cab.

 

Here’s another ’38 Ford COE, but a very special one: It’s powered by a pair of Ford flathead V8s. Built by GRICO, a division of the Gear Grinding Machine Company of Detroit, Michigan, this tractor is worthy of its own feature, as is the company. So consider this a teaser and stay tuned to the Garage for more of the story.

 

This 1940 Dodge COE straight truck is a perfect example of the cartoonish proportions so beloved by cabover enthusiasts, with its comically tall, short  doghouse and nosebleed cab height. Power was usually supplied by Dodge’s venerable L-head six, though Dodge did produce its own in-house diesel engine starting in 1939, a 331 CID four-stroke six rated at 96 hp.

 

Fargo, a Chicago truck maker acquired by Chrysler in 1928 and discontinued in the USA in 1930, later became the export and knockdown label for Chrysler-built trucks. A rebadged Dodge, more or less, with local equipment variations, the Fargo was popular in Canada and Australia but was also sold throughout Asia and South America. Oddly, Fargo and DeSoto trucks are still produced in Turkey to this day, though the local manufacturer is no longer affiliated with Chrysler in the USA. Shown here: 1941 Fargo Stakebed.

 

With its ground-breaking 3000 series in 1948, White departed from the traditional cabover’s punched-in-the-face look and created a line of trucks that won awards for industrial design. Also known as the round-cab White, the 3000 featured an electrically operated tilt cab for service access.

 

Here’s another 3000 Series White, this one a 1957 model serving the Caracas, Venezuela Fire Department. By this point, cabover truck configurations were on two separate paths. The original stub-nose style was called a short-conventional cab by some manufacturers, while the White and similar layouts were sometimes known as forward-control or cab-forward designs.

 

This oddball is the International Harvester Sightliner, produced from 1957 to 1964, approximately. It’s all too obvious how it was created: A conventional long-nose cab (Loadstar, it appears) was mounted up forward over the powerplant. But where the firewall would be, a pair of glass panes were cut in to provide extra forward visibility—hence the Sightliner tag. Note the little wipers. Drivers said the auxiliary windows produced hazardous glare from oncoming headlights at night, and some operators blocked or painted them over.

 

Totally new for 1960, the Chevrolet Tilt-Cab and its GMC-badged brother received the full glamour-puss treatment from the GM Design and Styling Department. Known as the L-Model at Chevy and the T-Model at GMC, the 72-inch steel Tilt-Cabs were offered with a wide array of engines, from Detroit 71-series two-stroke diesels to a 702 CID gasoline V12.

To be continued…