“OK, you’re a cab.” That out of the way, Mack and Dodge team up on this ’46 COE pickup to carve
out a unique niche in the realm of truckdom.
By Scott Longman Photos by TheBruntBros
Most of us fall in love with complete vehicles, not just some random part of them. So, the object of our fevered affections would be something like a running, driving ’68 Super Bee, and not just the driver’s side C-pillar, or maybe the valence panel. We even almost understand developing palpitations for just a drivetrain. We once almost swooned for a 413 wedge motor with a four-speed. But somebody who falls for just a piece of sheetmetal? That, we didn’t get. Well, until we met Mack MacBride. See, Mack was driving around one day
in Salt Lake City because that’s pretty much all there is to do in Salt Lake City, when he heard about a Dodge truck cab for sale. Just the cab. No chassis. No drivetrain. No nothin’ else. But he went to look, and mmediately
felt the need to propose. When we first heard about it, we figured he’d been suffering from cerebral low compression. But then we got a chance to see it. It isn’t just a cab. It’s a monument to postwar America. For four, long, brutal years, all automotive production had gone into the war. But after the whole mess was resolved, we roared back into civilian production in ‘46, which is when this thing was built. And this cab wasn’t just some return-to-normalcy deal. It said: We won, and we have jet engines and Werner von Braun and a rocket program and half of Europe if we decide to keep it but why the hell would we and their Tiger tanks are now VFW ornaments and we turned Normandy into the world’s biggest harbor and then island-hopped onto Hirohito’s patio and got a permanent timeshare on Okinawa and we gave all the jackbooted reptiles Nuremberg neckties and came back looking for Rosie the Riveter who as it turns out has really missed us and was one of triplets. Who knew? I mean, about the triplets part. But if anybody didn’t like it, four words: We got The Bomb. It’s
