1941-46 Chevrolet pickup, and The Last Picture Show

From Chris Baker, painter, and our man in Southern California.  This one looks awfully close to original, though Chris says all insignia were missing, and the truck's owner didn't know what he had, exactly. Well, that's what Autoliterate is for. This is a 1941-46 Chevrolet pickup. Probably a '41, '42, or  a '46; civilian truck production stopped during the war. I like this truck a lot, in what looks like its original and unrestored condition--that's recycling!-- though I would get rid of those whitewalls as soon as possible. On trucks of that era, standard-procedure at the factory was to paint fenders and running boards black, and I think that is what I'm seeing here.

Some people think of this series as the "Wurlitzer" Chevrolet trucks, and the front grill does call to mind  jukeboxes of the era. There's some art deco going on there.

In a previous post I mentioned Peter Bogdanovich's startling 1971 film, The Last Picture Show (based on a Larry McMurty novel, with the screenplay co-written by Bogdanovich and McMurty). A great early role for Jeff Bridges, and for Cybil Shepherd too. Randy Quaid's first appearance on film. (His next was in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz). And a great late-career role for that old John Ford cowboy,  Ben Johnson. It's set in a small Texas town, and the opening shot, as I remember, is Sonny's (Timothy Bottoms) boot pumping the accelerator while trying to start an old pickup truck on a cold Texas morning. I can relate to this. 

I had to check, but the pickup in the movie, co-owned by the Timothy Bottoms and Jeff Bridges characters--is not a '41-'46 Chevrolet, as above, but the immediately preceding series, possibly a '39.