COLLECTOR CLASSICS
The ultimate car hauler
Chris Carlson’s two classic vehicles will arrive together at Sunday’s Sockeye Run Car Show ’n’ Shine in Stevenson Community Park. And we do mean together.
The big rig looks like a combination of a 1960s motorhome and a ’50s icon of the Greyhound Scenic Cruiser with its mid-ship “sky dome” upper windshield protruding from the roof. What makes this hauler all the more unique are its windowed sides allowing a view of the 1937 Chevrolet coupe hot rod carried inside on the rear deck. The pairing of car hauler and hot rod cause people to do double takes wherever it travels.
Sockeye Run Car Show organizer Doug Harder learned of the very special rig and just had to have it as a feature at Sunday’s car show.
“There is nothing I’ve ever seen like this and it will create a lot of interest,” Harder says.
The inspiration for the car hauler was a rig owned by 1960s California drag racing legend Tommy Ivo. Built on a late 1960s Dodge truck chassis, the hauler with windowed sides carried Ivo’s two hemi-powered dragsters inside with his customized Corvette on the roof.
Chris Carlson, operator of Babe’s Auto in the southeastern B.C. community of South Slocan, is also a weekend drag racer using Dodge products. He and co-builder/owner of the El Chupacabra II race car, Pat McInnis, campaign a 1964 Dodge 330 station wagon with an altered wheel base and 426 cubic inch “max wedge” V8 engine that regularly races at Mission Raceway, Thunder Mountain Raceway in Kelowna and Osoyoos.
Tired of trailering his race cars, he and his retired contractor father Bill decided to build the car hauler.
“We always had open trailers so people could see the race car we were hauling. We decided to build a car hauler with the same concept so people could see what is inside,” he says.
He found a 1969 Dodge L600 three-ton cab forward truck for sale on Vancouver Island to provide the cab for his UTR (ultimate tow rig).
“These Mopar heavy duty trucks from the ’60s had galvanized cabs so it was in really good shape with no rust,” he says.
A wrecked 2005 GMC long wheel base pickup truck with Duramax diesel power coupled to an Allison automatic transmission would provide the bones and power for the new rig.
Carlson widened the front suspension by a foot so the wheels would fit inside the Dodge cab front fenders. He moved the cab forward on the truck chassis and positioned the engine low in the frame three feet behind the cab. He then built a raised rear passenger area over the engine compartment accessed from the driver’s area with a small sectional couch.
Rear passengers enjoy views through the huge raised windshield and expansive side windows salvaged from used motorhomes, providing sightlines not unlike those of the Scenic Cruiser Greyhound buses from 60 years ago.
A small kitchenette and bathroom are located behind the passenger compartment. The steel structured rear deck has an aluminum cover with huge side windows recycled from old RVs, providing a clear view of the vehicle being carried inside.
“The scale of the project was mind-boggling,” Chris admits of the two-year father-and-son build of the 36-foot-long rig. “It was a huge amount of work. It had to be broken into chunks to get your head into it. Sane people don’t do things like this.”
The 1937 Chevrolet coupe carried inside was a project purchased by 80-year-old Bill Carlson because he wanted a street rod.
“We had been talking about building something with electric drive,” Chris explains. He replaced the modern Chevrolet V8 engine with an AC76 electric motor package that has been adapted to a five-speed manual transmission.
The main battery pack is composed of 18,650 lithium ion units recycled from used laptop batteries purchased on eBay. Another bank of batteries from a Chevy Volt provide additional electric power.
“It performs about as well as an original 90 horsepower 1937 Chevy capable of highway speeds,” Carlson says, adding, “It has a range of about 160 kilometres.”
The Chevy street rod’s electric power is only obvious when you realize it doesn’t have tail pipes and you can look right through the engine compartment from the hood louvres without seeing the small electric power plant that sits low in the frame.
“People are very interested everywhere we stop,” Chris says of his unique combination of car hauler and the Electrod carried within. “It’s a big rig and hard to park but it does the job.”
Once the Sockeye Run Car Show is behind them, plans are for Chris, wife Ronni and twoyear-old son Hawksley to join the Coast-to-Coast Canada 150 tour from Victoria to Newfoundland and Labrador when it passes through the Kootenays in early July.
Bill Carlson drove his 1957 Buick Cabellero station wagon pulling a trailer on the 2010 Coaster Tour and new self-contained car hauler will be family sized for this latest adventure.
The tour makes stops across Canada and will be part of Canada 150 celebrations in many communities giving people a chance to see the Carlson’s unique car hauler. “It will be a great adventure and a good chance to spend quality time together,” Chris says.
For more information on the Sockeye Run Car Show ‘n’ Shine see page D2 or visit sockeyerun.com