Any medic vehicles out there?

[i.spring]

I just sat down and scanned my first ever soldier photo album, the album is from 1940 in the invasion of france, enjoy.
Ian

[i.spring]

[i.spring]

can any one tell me, is this a american car ?
Thanks.
Ian

[Bill Murray]

Hi Jason:

Your beute vehicle is a Bedford MWD 15 CWT 4X2.

Roughly 66,000 made 1939-1945 according to Bart Vanderveen's books.

Bill

[Bill Murray]

Hello Ian:

For now, I am calling your red cross roadster a 1939 Plymouth.
Tht is subject to change as the quality of the scans was...... well, a little scratchy and the contrast is quite a bit off.

Assuming the original prints were nice and clear, and I have not seen you post any photos that were not, play around with the photo editing program of your scanner or photoshop or whatever if you have it.

I am posting here a factory photo of such a car and you can see some of the things I look for. The louvres in the side of the bonnet seem close, the headlamps in the front wings are close as well although I cannot tell if they are round or square which would have to be square if it is indeed a Plymouth.
Two things that bother me, and it may be the quality of the scan, is the hood emblem is a little different than the Plymouth "Mayflower ship" emblem and the front windscreen surround appears to be slightly more squared off.

Please see if you can clean up the scan and resend it.
Bill

[i.spring]

Thanks Bill for your great information. I will scan and post a bigger picture this evening, hopefully it will help.
By the way, a little question, how did the germans come, to acquire such a large amount of american cars. and most of these cars seem to be pritty new models for 1939-1940.? Was it popular for civilians to import big american cars into europe before the war?
Many thanks.
Ian

[Bill Murray]

Hi Ian:

No short answer to your question and I have "writ large" about this subject on other forums. Still, it might be of interest to members here who keep running into captured or impressed American cars of the late 1930s.

In essence, the American car industry "owned" the car and truck business in most of the world at that time. There were only five other countries with appreciable car and truck manufacturing capability before WWII, Britain, France, Germany, Austria and Italy.

Britain had perhaps the most open market in that even though they had a huge number car and truck manufacturers both large and small, they were still an important import market for American and French cars and to a lesser extent, Italian sporty cars. The two largest British manufacturers, Ford and Vauxhall/Bedford were also American owned. The British did tax very heavily the American style cars based on engine capacity which tended to limit the sales a bit.

France had a much more closed market and the majority of the cars sold there up to 1940 were made by French manufacturers. There was, of course, Matford (Mathis-Ford) that made a range of cars similar to the American versions but it was not a big player.

Italy was even more closed and there were no American owned companies there although they collaborated with a number of other European companies for motors etc.

Germany also had a robust industry with many manufacturers and Ford Cologne was a big player both then and now. The market seems to have been rather open but most vehicles sold there were of German manufacture.

Austria, despite it's size, had a very well developed car and truck industry and did a lot of exporting throughout the world and their market was quite open for other countries vehicles.

As to exports, Britain, France and Italy mostly exported to their former colonies. Germany exported some vehicles to both eastern and western Europe as did Austria.

For the rest of Europe, it was mostly an American game. They either had assembly factories or complete manufacturing capabilities or just exported vehicles from the US and Canada (Canada produced the majority of the right hand drive export vehicles).

I should not leave out Russia here, but virtually all of their prewar production was older versions of American brands, for the most part Ford (GAZ).

The reason for the popularity of American cars is still a subject for discussion amongst "real historians" which I am not, but I have come to the opinion that they were relatively cheap because of our volumes, they were mechanically much more simple than European vehicles and perhaps most important, they were very reliable, overbuilt but built so that anyone could fix them. Remember, even in those days, we could drive from the east to the west and the north to the south, journeys of several weeks and reliability and ease of service was a big selling point.

As to why the Germans used so many American vehicles, that is a story for another day, but suffice to say their war planning was not very good and they could in no way produce enough vehicles for their war ambitions.
I have read that over 80% of the vehicles used by the Germans for personnel and war goods transport were captured vehicles.

Sorry for the book.
Bill

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[i.spring]

Bill that is fantastic reading ! Writh as much as you want, i find it all absolutly fascinating.
Thank you so much.
Ian