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Terms Which Have Disappeared

KILO NOVEMBER

One Too Many
Messages
1,068
Location
Hurricane Coast Florida
Not to be confused with Utes, or Australian utility vehicles

images


images

I'm old enough to have seen these if they had been sold in the US, but I don't recall them. I do recall the now-extinct Chevrolet El Camino, popularly known as a "Cowboy Cadillac". It had nearly the same design, but a little sexier.
1969_chevrolet_el_camino-pic-22098-1600x1200.jpeg


I think I heard Chevy may be reintroducing the model (car that is) this year.
 
Messages
10,930
Location
My mother's basement
^^^^
Although the earliest Rancheros date from '57 (if I ain't mistaken), and were based on the Fairlane. That's a later and other variety from that Aussie example above.
 
Last edited:
Messages
10,930
Location
My mother's basement
As to the "cowboy Cadillac" ...

I know of a metal sculptor -- a fine artist who liked to play around with cars -- who created what came to be called the "El Cadillac," an El Camino-like vehicle made from a then (early '70s) late-model Caddy with extensive body damage to its hind regions.
 

vitanola

I'll Lock Up
Messages
4,254
Location
Gopher Prairie, MI
Cadillac trucks have been around for a long while, though in the old days the truck body would usually be attached to give a second life to a superannuated luxury car. Truck chassis were very expensive, and low mileage limousines were both very cheap and very heavily built. Here is a '13 Cadillac which had been converted to a wreacker in 1918:
Holmeswrecker_01_700.jpg


And a 1929 Cadillac similarly converted in 1934, in this case towing a Flxible city bus:
1929_Cadillac_tow_truck.jpg


of course, on the other side of the pong they used their own luxury cars for the ourpose. IN fact, many Daimler and Rolls-Royce wreckers which had started out as limousines just before or just after the Great War were in service until the 1960's.
Daimler_lorry_towing_rolls_royce_800_.jpg

Here we have a pre-war (1910 or 1911) Daimler towing its lesser cousin, a mid-1920's Rolls-Royce.
 

LizzieMaine

Bartender
Messages
33,715
Location
Where The Tourists Meet The Sea
Those kinds of conversions would have been excellent ways to make use of used luxury cars that couldn't be given away during the Depression. Reviewing newspaper classifieds from the early and mid 1930s show listing after listing for high-end seven or eight-year-old Cadillacs, Lincolns, Packards, Pierce-Arrows and other suchlike cars going for $50 here and $35 there, about what you could expect to pay for a used Ford. A lot of 1920s high-rollers were on their uppers and owning a fancy, high-maintenance car was about as losing a proposition as there was. On the other hand, if you owned a hauling business they were a lot cheaper than buying a regular truck.
 

SSuperDave

New in Town
Messages
39
Location
Houston TX
Those kinds of conversions would have been excellent ways to make use of used luxury cars that couldn't be given away during the Depression. Reviewing newspaper classifieds from the early and mid 1930s show listing after listing for high-end seven or eight-year-old Cadillacs, Lincolns, Packards, Pierce-Arrows and other suchlike cars going for $50 here and $35 there, about what you could expect to pay for a used Ford. A lot of 1920s high-rollers were on their uppers and owning a fancy, high-maintenance car was about as losing a proposition as there was. On the other hand, if you owned a hauling business they were a lot cheaper than buying a regular truck.

"On their uppers", now thats a term that has gone by the wayside. I always liked it. The uppers here are the bits that cover the upper part of a boot or shoe. The implication is that the soles have worn out and that the person concerned is reduced to a pair that consists only of uppers — quite useless, of course — and that he or she is too poor to be able to replace them.
 

Stearmen

I'll Lock Up
Messages
7,202
Those kinds of conversions would have been excellent ways to make use of used luxury cars that couldn't be given away during the Depression. Reviewing newspaper classifieds from the early and mid 1930s show listing after listing for high-end seven or eight-year-old Cadillacs, Lincolns, Packards, Pierce-Arrows and other suchlike cars going for $50 here and $35 there, about what you could expect to pay for a used Ford. A lot of 1920s high-rollers were on their uppers and owning a fancy, high-maintenance car was about as losing a proposition as there was. On the other hand, if you owned a hauling business they were a lot cheaper than buying a regular truck.
And add in the expense of fixing the occasional window after a rock came through!
 

BlueTrain

Call Me a Cab
Messages
2,073
The folks in the book "My neck of the woods," which Miss Lizzie is probably familiar with, had a Marmon in the 1940s. It hadn't been converted to a truck (I think) but was what we might call a beater car today. But Marmon did make big trucks, too. And International Harvester did make cars, sort of.

I thought for sure I had asked if anyone had ever used the word "yuke" before, in referring to a type of vehicle. I couldn't find the post if I did and nobody responded anyway. So, in case anyone had been worried about it, a "yuke" was a Euclid truck, all of which were heavy duty earth-moving trucks. Since "yuke" was a short nickname for Euclid, there would be no correct way to spell it and anyway, that's the only way I ever head it spoken. Never heard anyone actually say "Euclid."
 

kaiser

A-List Customer
Messages
402
Location
Germany, NRW, HSK
My Dad worked in construction in the 50's and 60's, yuke was a term I heard many times when I was growing up. I got to visit some of his job sites and saw those things in real life. They were massive to an eight year old.
 

BlueTrain

Call Me a Cab
Messages
2,073
A totally unrelated word, but does anyone say "yikes!" anymore. Don't think it was ever vulgar. No worse than "My word" or "Strike me blue!"
 

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