1952 Chevrolet COE

 

“You get a better, longer lasting return on the dollars you invest in a Chevrolet Advance-Design truck. You get quality, powerful performance, handling ease at their best — and at the lowest list price in the entire truck field. See your Chevrolet dealer. He’s got the right truck for you.”

Trucks aren’t the focus of this blog, but we think this Chevrolet COE, model 5703, is quite interesting, not only because of its unconventional look, but also in its historic context.

During the postwar years, all American car makers sold warmed-up prewar designs. The demand for new cars was huge anyway, and developing an all-new design was a vanity rather than a necessity. GM, back then the undisputed trendsetter in car styling, quite surprisingly choose commercial vehicles to herald its all-new postwar design direction: the “Advance-Design” series of trucks entered production already in May 1947, one full year ahead of the new passenger cars. It’s debatable why GM rushed out the trucks first. One theory suggests that truck production never stopped during wartime, and thus, the body dies were probably worn out by 1946. And reproducing new dies of the old design, or creating entirely new sets would be a similar investment.

Strangely enough it’s pretty well-documented who designed the new Cadillac or Chevrolet models, but there’s no mention of the designers of GM commercial vehicles. We guess it simply wasn’t a prestigious job, and these trucks were styled alongside the passenger cars in the GM styling studios, as there was no dedicated commercial design studio either.

Whatever the case, the nameless GM designers applied all modern treats to these new trucks. At the time, their styling and detailing were thoroughly modern. There was a proper onslaught of variations and sizes, too, from pickup truck to lorry, meeting every conceivable demand. Chevrolet’s copywriters counted “109 models on 8 wheelbases” for the 1948 lineup.

Our pictured COE (read: „Cab Over Engine”) was the fruit of creatively dealing with the legislation: as the overall length for trucks was limited, the cab of the standard truck simply was lifted atop the engine to gain a few more inches of cargo space. Reconnecting the front grille to the higher cowl line required a very bulbous bonnet, and voila, ready was one very peculiar looking truck design.

The „Advance-Design“ COE was built virtually unchanged between 1947 and 1955, but little details narrow down the year in which our pictured truck was produced. The two-piece door glass with separate ventilation pane was introduced in 1951, and push-button door handles came in 1952. The “Chevrolet” bonnet emblems disappeared in 1953, and for 1954, the windshield became an one-piece curved glass. Hence, our pictured truck was produced in 1952. And despite its vintage, it’s still going strong in daily service as a particular (read: privately owned) transport. Because the state-owned bus network is notoriously unreliable, trucks like these remain being the indispensable people hauler in Cuba’s rural areas.