I used to driv a Corvair Greenbriar van for work. What. A. Pig. The gear shift was about 3 feet long and the steering was sloppy. I felt like I was driving a sports car when I got off work and drove home in by Corvair Monza.
@Nevada_545. You are right. Moving the gas tank out of the cab had nothing to do with making an extended cab. I know as late as 1969 the Ford truck had the gas tank in the cab. Studebaker removed the gas tank from the cab back in 1949 or so.
Real men arenât afraid to ride in the cab with 15 gallons of gas. Manufacturers turned us into wimps by removing the gas tank out of the cab and under the truck. (I hope you donât take this seriously. I think it was a good idea to remove the gas tank from the cab). I remember a Dodge truck commercial I the late 1960s for an extended cab. It showed the features a real man appreciated in the truck. It showed how easy it was to service and how big a payload it could carryâthings a man would appreciate. It thrn showed the extended cab with a couple of children riding there and another kid in the front seat. The ad said that real men donât drive away to get away from their kids. They like to have their children along with them. I remember years ago driving along with my three year old in the front seat of my old Chevy pickup. Suddenly the engine started racing. Before I could figure out what was going on, I heard the gears crunching in the transmission. My son had shifted the stick into neutral and was trying to pull it back into high.
You can enter the US with a Mexican car, but once you get away from the border region, you will spend a lot of time being harassed by gung-ho cops who think theyâve got a cartel guy. And, there is a time limit you can have the car in the US, Plus you have to buy special insurance before you cross the border. Totally only liability, no comprehensive available as far as I have been able to find. I have taken my 2009 Sienna into McAllen, but have no intention of ever driving north with it. I think the insurance was like 100k/300k, and only good for 30 days maximum.
If I were to go north, Iâd rent a car and drive it to avoid being harassed for foreign plates.
This is my opinion, based on being illegally stopped with Texas plates in both Mississippi and Kentucky.
I got side-tracked by the import car issue. My original plan was to write about my experiences working at the local feed mill in 1963, before being drafted.
Farmers would come and park their pickup in front of the feed mill office, talk to the boss about their order, then go to the grocery store for the weekâs groceries.
One of my jobs was to start those pickups when it was their turn, drive it into the mill, do whatever was specified, then drive it back out and park it.
There were pickups from before WWII. Just about everything you could imagine. Foot starters, push button starters, you name it. And, of course, I had to figure it out each time.
I donât believe we ever had a Model-A or -T, though. Most were battery started, no cranking at all.
Exactly which law was the officer violating?
The Hinds County Mississippi Sheriffâs office stopped a car with out of state plates on I-20 because the driver and passengers looked suspicious. The car was searched and $1million dollars in cash was found and seized because there was âdrug residueâ on the money. The names of those in the car were never made public so evidently no charges were ever filed but the county kept the money.
And of course there have been dozens of cases where Mexicans have been robbed by local law enforcement on I-10 and I-20 and reported and likely hundreds that go unreported.
I live in the most corrupt state in the nation and that situation seems to be a tradition that will continue well into the future.
How does the sheriff like his new farm? 
There were even pickup trucks before WWI.
I understood @irlandes to mean that he drove some pre WW II pickups that were still in use in 1963 @the_same_mountainbike. But that Model T looks great. Is it legal to drive such a vehicle on public roads these days?
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Different states likely have different statutes on this question. In NH I believe itâs legal, but I sure wouldnât try to take one on the highway.
Truth is, the people that own and drive these are far, far, far safer than most of the other drivers on the road. They know their vehicles, know their limitations, and are focused on what theyâre doing. I wish all drivers were like that, but they donât even come close.
Here it is legal to drive them on public roadâs but not on the interststeâs. I see them a lot during the summer going & coming from car show;s & paradeâs. Also all classic carâs are legal with tagâs from the year they were made if you can find one the state just issues a new resteration each year using the tag from the year it was made.
I have seen enough of the old vehicles with collector plates on the road around here, so a non issue in our fair city. Never really minded the tank behind the seat in my 71 or 72 ford pickup I drove till 1999, though I do not recall hearing gas sloshing around.
I had a 57 chevy PU when it got a little below half a tank you could hear gas sloshing around especiley on a curving road.
Exactly which law was the officer violating?
Is that a serious question, Insightful?
It is well known that the Constitution as interpreted by many rulings from the US Supreme Court, says the cops can pull cars over only under two conditions. First, for probable cause. There has to be something wrong about your car or what you are doing.
Second, if they stop everyone. An example common in my life is the Immigration inspection station around 60 miles from the border, near Falfurrias. Everyone is stopped and is subject to total car search. And, the SCOTUS has ruled this is legal. The U.S. Border Patrol has slightly different rules.
So, the law broken is the one which requires probable cause. And, Gosh, lookee, a Texas license plate is not probable cause.
I wrote about both incidents when they happened. 2007 and 2009.
Actually, it is not a law so much as a Constitutional right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. Are you sure this was a serious question? If it is, you need to do some serious reading on your rights and the US Constitution.
The last major SCOTUS ruling that I know of was in the late 90âs. The Iowa Highway patrol decided that any stop, even for a bad light bulb, gave them the right to order citizens out of their cars for a complete tear-down and search.
In this case, the man, whose name I forget, actually had some marijuana in his car. But, the court ruled again that unless the driver was being arrested (for probable cause) they could only search enough for their own safety. And, after all the court action, he was in the end acquitted on the illegal substance charge.
And, later, it was reported that the IHP was continuing to make illegal searches.
By the way, in college, I passed out of all the required courses with CLEP, and so I had a lot of optional classes. Mostly I took courses involving the law and criminal justice and stuff like that. And, in my Business Law class I needed for the CPA exam, it was taught by an attorney who had us write briefs, which prepared me for the brief writing needed on the Exam.
Then, from 1984 till 1993, I did extensive legal research for an organization I was in. I am not an attorney, but I certainly know the basic legal principles beyond the average citizen.
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Quote irlandes âI donât believe we ever had a Model-A or -T, though. Most were battery started, no cranking at all.â
Self starters were available for Model Ts. My '21 had one. They were standard equipment on all Model As. Both models had cranks, although the Model Aâs was not permanently dangling under the radiator like the Tâs.
When my younger son was doing his medical schooling, the prof was describing the break of the thumbâs attaching bone to the hand. Itâs called a chauffeurâs break. The prof had no idea why. Dr Brian was able to explain it to him as Iâd shown him how to crank my Model A when the battery was low. One doesnât wrap their thumb around the crank, instead keeping all five digits on the same side of the crank. That way, if it kicks back, the crank simply pulls out of the âchauffeurâsâ hand.