1947 Crosley Round Side Pickup Truck, 1/4-ton, Restored, Push Button Start..LOOK

1947 Crosley Round Side Pickup Truck

It’s cute, it’s cozy inside and it’s a Crosley! MotoeXotica Classic Cars is excited to offer this nicely restored 1947 Crosley Round Side Pickup Truck. This example was picked up (no pun intended) from a Carson City, Nevada estate.

The wee hauler is just one of 3,182 Crosley pickup trucks made in 1947 at its Marion, Indiana factory. Its shiny silver paint is a very good condition, as are its glass panes. There are no windshield wipers but all of its lights are intact and haze-free. The small hauler’s bumpers are in good condition. This little truck rolls on Power King tires, size 4.80-12, with shiny Crosley moon hubcaps covering steel wheels. All of the truck’s body panels are straight and in fine condition and the engine bay and battery are extremely tidy. Battery was most recently tested and charged in 2013. The pickup bed comes with a snap-on tonneau cover.

Inside, the gray bench seat is in decent shape but shows some signs of wear upon close inspection. The complementary carpet, headliner, matching dashboard and three-spoke steering wheel are all in near-excellent order, with the door panels, mirrors and shift lever in very good shape. To round out the interior, the truck has an RetroSound AM/FM stereo and has been converted to push-button start.

The CoBra (Copper Brazed, also known as “The Mighty Tin”) engine was originally developed by Lloyd Taylor, of Taylor Engines in California, for military use aboard PT boats and B-17 Flying Fortress bombers. The engine was made from sheet metal rather than cast iron like most other engines. This was done to get a thin, uniform wall thickness and thus avoid the creation of hot spots around the combustion chamber that could ignite the fuel, causing pre-ignition (knocks), which, in turn, limited the compression ratio. These engines were used mainly to power generators, refrigeration compressors, etc. and were widely praised for their successes in the war effort.

The engine was a 724cc overhead-cam four with a 2.5-inch bore and 2.25-inch stroke that produced 26.5 horsepower at 5,400 rpm. The engine was adopted for automobile use in 1946. It was a small and lightweight with a single overhead camshaft driven by two sets of bevel gears and a vertical shaft at the front of the block. The unitary block and cylinder head weighed only 14.8 pounds dry; complete with all accessories (including the flywheel) weighing only 133 pounds. Longevity was measured in hours and was strictly controlled by equipment maintenance schedules for the wartime duties but corrosion became a problem for these engines in civilian service.

The Crosley was manufactured by the Crosley Corporation and later by Crosley Motors Incorporated in the United States intermittently from 1939 to 1952. Industrialist Powel Crosley, Jr., of Cincinnati, Ohio, owner of Crosley Broadcasting Corporation and the Cincinnati Reds baseball team, had ambitious plans to build a subcompact car and with able assistance from his younger, graduate engineer brother, Lewis Crosley, developed assembly plants at Richmond and Marion, Indiana. In May 1939, the first car was shown at the Indianapolis Speedway, a two-door convertible that weighed under 1,000 pounds and sold for $250. It did not achieve sales success but in 1941 more body styles were introduced.

The chassis had an 80-inch wheelbase using half-elliptic springs with a beam axle in front and quarter-elliptic springs in the rear. Power came from a two-cylinder Waukesha air-cooled engine that had the fan as an integral part of the flywheel. The engine connected with a three-speed transmission then directly to a torque tube to the rear axle, thus eliminating the need for joints. However, this arrangement was judged unreliable, and conventional universal joints were fitted beginning in 1941.

In 1941, the body styles available were expanded to include two- and four-passenger convertibles, a convertible sedan, a station wagon, a panel truck, a pickup and two models called “Parkway Delivery” (a mini-panel with no roof over the front seat) and “Covered Wagon” (a convertible pickup truck with a removable back seat). Crosley’s first metal-topped sedan (the Liberty Sedan) was introduced for 1942.

During World War II, the Crosley became attractive because of gasoline rationing and the good mileage it could achieve: 50 miles per US gallon. Crosley was the last company to cease production of civilian vehicles in 1942, partly to aid Crosley sales to facilitate fuel conservation and partly because the War Production Board needed time to determine a use for Crosley’s small factories.

Civilian car production resumed at the Marion facility in 1946 with the new, larger and aerodynamic CC model, designed by the firm of Sundberg & Ferar of Royal Oak, Michigan. (The Richmond facility had been sold during the war years.)

Crosley introduced several “firsts” in the American automobile industry, including the first use of the term ‘Sport Utility’ in 1948 (albeit on an open model based on the wagon, not a wagon on a truck chassis); first mass-market single overhead camshaft (SOHC) engine in 1946; first slab-sided postwar car, also in 1946; first all steel-bodied wagon in 1947; and many others. Famous Crosley owners include:

This car is currently located at our facility in St. Louis, Missouri. Current mileage on the odometer shows 28,646 miles. It is sold as is, where is, on a clean and clear title.

VIN: CC4724500

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