The story of a Bedford pickup living in NZ.
Bryan & Cassandra dropped me a line, after reading the pages featuring various Bedford PCs on the site, with photos and some background history on a cracking little Bedford PCZ pickup that they own. This pickup version has been in Bryan's family from new. It was purchased as a rolling chassis, front end & scuttle, and the cab built by a local coachbuilder. Unlike the Australian ute versions, this pickup has single piece windscreen, as found on UK vans. Bob then designed and built the rear load tray, which is described in more detail below. Firstly though, a photo showing the Bedford back in 1982.
|
|
|
And a later photograph, taken in 1998 during a local parade, just before the restoration commenced.
|
|
History behind this interesting Bedford PC/PCZ light commercial.
The Restored PCZ
Click the thumbnails below to view full-size photographs of this restored Bedford truck!
|
|
|
|
"We have a 1949 PCZ Bedford truck, bought new by Bob, Bryan's dad. After having his name down on the new vehicle waiting list for a long time, Bob drove it from the General Motors in Wellington, New Zealand, to the body builders in Greytown, using an apple crate as a seat. Once the body had been built, Bob designed, built & fitted his own deck. (The truck was supplied new up to & including the windscreen thus the Z in the model description). Where many of the PC model were built using Vauxhall 12 doors, our doors were built from scratch using a wooden frame.
Bryan has recently spent many months bringing our 'Beddy' PCZ back to it's original condition, stripping it right back to a bare chassis & starting from scratch to make our vehicle truly as original as possible. The motor was completely rebuilt. I think it is fair to say that here in New Zealand, there were no two PCZs ever built to quite the same design as there were many independent body builders used. This truck was used as a business vehicle & did many miles during the course of it's life, never letting Dad down in the 25 years that he drove it. I enclose a photo, you will notice that the cab shape on our Bedford is very different at the rear to those that you feature from Australia. We were lucky enough to start with a truck that had been cared for all its life by Bob, Bryan's Dad."
|
|
Thanks for sending the pics and story over!! More stories about cars belonging to visitors to oldclassiccar, can be found in the Your Classic Car section. More information on the post-war Bedford PC range of vans, utes and pickups can be found here.
|
