The Big Rig thread!

It's quite a way up there. Could be worse. I give you the extremely cool Futurliner. Only non-cool thing about it was the driver who got quite hot with all that glass and no air conditioning. The hubcaps feature the symbol for nuclear fission. Sadly the Futurliners didnt run on uranium.


 
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Why is it that British truck designers didn't get the streamlining memo written to them by the American truck designers?

After WW2 the USA had made a lot of profit, the UK was bankrupt. Pressing flat steel panels was cheaper than ones with complex curves, it wasn't un-common to find horse and carts still in use in the early 50s so any lorry was better than no lorry! The Guy Otter was also looking dated, even by UK standards by '51, it was facelifted in '53.

6178877686_3cf2df177c_z.jpg


Art Deco never really caught on for motor vehicle design in the UK either, plenty of cinemas and houses, no cars. :lol:
 
After WW2 the USA had made a lot of profit, the UK was bankrupt. Pressing flat steel panels was cheaper than ones with complex curves, it wasn't un-common to find horse and carts still in use in the early 50s so any lorry was better than no lorry! The Guy Otter was also looking dated, even by UK standards by '51, it was facelifted in '53.

6178877686_3cf2df177c_z.jpg


Art Deco never really caught on for motor vehicle design in the UK either, plenty of cinemas and houses, no cars. :lol:

That's actualy very pretty, looks like it could be a character in a BBC kidsshow :p
 
Mean Green does records

 
That's not chrome, that's stainless steel, IIRC.
 
I was browsing through a Finnish classic car mag last year and there was an article about a swede (IIRC) who had got his hands on one of those Futurliners. He managed to track down one from the US which had been pretty much laying on someone's backyard or something like that. It was in a pretty sorry state, he had it shipped over to Sweden and had been working on a thorough restoration project for a couple of years, it was still a work in progress when the mag was published. Awesome trucks.
 
Yes Futurliner #8 is being restored here. So far they've spent four years and four million on it, and are about halfway finished. Shiny bits are stainless steel, unfortunately the rest isnt.

YrJgC.jpg

#8 then. Note the bubble canopy that turned the drivers into crisps.


#8 in 2008. Bubble canopy was covered during refurbishment in 1953, and a air vent was added.

Here's an auction on one of the three in running condition. Worth watching for the rapper auctioneer alone.
 
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Yes Futurliner #8 is being restored here. So far they've spent four years and four million on it, and are about halfway finished. Shiny bits are stainless steel, unfortunately the rest isnt.

Good to know...I really hope that's kronor though :)
 
It's quite a way up there. Could be worse. I give you the extremely cool Futurliner. Only non-cool thing about it was the driver who got quite hot with all that glass and no air conditioning. The hubcaps feature the symbol for nuclear fission. Sadly the Futurliners didnt run on uranium.


/offtopic
This kind of makes me sad, I was watching some Neil DeGrasse Tyson videos in which he was saying how we used to look to the future with hope and everything was "of tomorrow" and the Futureliner is clearly an indication of that but now we look at it with fear :(
/offtopic

Sorry I'm sick and I get someone wistful when sick :p
 
/offtopic
This kind of makes me sad, I was watching some Neil DeGrasse Tyson videos in which he was saying how we used to look to the future with hope and everything was "of tomorrow" and the Futureliner is clearly an indication of that but now we look at it with fear :(
/offtopic
Yep, the bright, hopeful outlook into the future after the technological revolutions of the fifties and the social revolutions of the sixties somehow changed into a dystopic, cynical, dark outlook in the seventies and eighties. See Hunter S. Thompson's "wave speech" as one of the earliest examples, followed by the grim-yet-cool world of Gibson's cyberpunk novels, the aptly-named early 80s song "The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades" and the sentimental-yet-cynical look back to the fifties that is Fagen's "Nightfly" album.
 
I love the Futurliners. I followed the restoration of #10 from about 2005 when I first discovered that thing until they finished. Those guys put in a lot of effort and dedication into that truck.
 

The graffiti....What kind of a world aillianated, mindless vandall do you have to be to find something like this in a backlot or wrecking yard or wherever it was before it got rescued, and not realise it's something special and you plaster it with your 'art' anyway?
 
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It was sitting around in the previous owners yard in Chatsworth, California for a few decades. Chatsworth seems like a well off area, but white kids do grafitti too. The chance of it being black kids are only 3%, and we all know hispanics can't paint because they're busy picking cotton in the fields or making burgers or whatnot. The amount of rust, being California, is quite surprising. Before Jonsson tackled the Futurliner he did this one:

I9yce.jpg


 
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It was sitting around in the previous owners yard in Chatsworth, California for a few decades. Chatsworth seems like a well off area, but white kids do grafitti too. The chance of it being black kids are only 3%, and we all know hispanics can't paint because they're busy picking cotton in the fields or making burgers or whatnot. The amount of rust, being California, is quite surprising. Before Jonsson tackled the Futurliner he did this one:

I9yce.jpg



That's really cool.
 
If it was in Chatsworth, that Futurliner may well have been the inspiration for the Gotham City paddy wagons from Batman: The Animated Series.
Bruce Timm said that he used to drive by an old truck on his way to the Warner Brothers studios.
 
If it was in Chatsworth, that Futurliner may well have been the inspiration for the Gotham City paddy wagons from Batman: The Animated Series.
Bruce Timm said that he used to drive by an old truck on his way to the Warner Brothers studios.
Oh shit, I didn't even realize that I think you are right on the money!
 
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