There’s something really appealingly animal-like about this 1961 Morris J4 pickup truck. It’s less that it looks like any sort of specific animal, and more that is seems to have the bearing of an animal, something friendly and willing and tough, perhaps a bit like a combination between a mule and dwarf hippopotamus.
It’s a tidy little cabover package, with you and a friend and a 1500cc inline-four all hanging out in the little cab up front, with a nice long and deep bed at the rear. I especially like the copy in this page of the brochure, as it avoids tedious talk about power or how much it can carry and instead focuses on what matters: “front sidelamps and flashers are combined in attractive streamlined units” and “stop lamps/tail lamps with flashers form a neat three-in-one unit.”
Gentlemen, please! I can only get so erect this early in the morning!
Also, let’s see how true this claim of a “neat three-in-one unit” really is:
Okay, that is a nice neat unit. Two sections, three functions, I get it. These people understood how to sell some mothertrusting trucks.
does anyone know what’s going on with the guy on the right’s legs in the last image?
Is he just as happy to see those taillights as jason?
I think it’s another guy, bent over at the waist, with his head out of frame, lifting something in the least ergonomic way possible.
You can still see the J4 shape in the front engined Sherpa pickup and van that replaced it and lasted until 2006 as the LDV Convoy.
Dunno. Call it Maurice.
The pompatus of love….
Do I see TWO mirrors on that trucklet? Hubba-hubba! It was hard to get two mirrors on expensive American cars in the 60s and 70s. They should have bragged more.
What you don’t know is that they were made in Spain under license by SAVA (Sociedad Anónima de Vehículos Automóviles) at Valladolid since 1965. SAVA licensed and made Berliet trucks as SAVA-Berliet.
At the end of the 60s, ENASA, the makers of the Pegaso brand, bought SAVA, discontinued the truck lines and from the beginning of the 70s sold the vans under their own brand, Pegaso. They were sold until ENASA merged with Iveco.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAVA_J4?wprov=sfla1
I absolutely adore Forward Control trucks, one of my very favorite types of vehicle. Never knew this one existed! I love it
Challenge:
Look at that truck face for a full-on 10 seconds. Then tell me that you don’t see a brown pug with a quarter stuck between the incisors?
I was thinking English Bulldog but close enough.
PS, the ad has LHD — where on earth did they export them too?
Our school in Zim had the panel van version of one of these coverted into a school bus, with, two, very thinly padded, benches running down the load area. From memory once got a 15 man rugby team, plus half time orange carrier, in one for, fortunately a short trip to across town rivals.
The other “busses” were Datsun pick-ups with canopies, also with thin, longways benches, but they did not smell so much.
Memories are it was very noisy and always smelt of petrol from the carbs, and hot oil.
On one famous water polo trip my brother was on, the teacher/coach driving, had some sort of brain fizz and free wheeled down a mountain, reaching at least 80 mph, because that was the top speed on the speed the needle pegged on.
There are not nearly enough books about light commercials from this era. I tried to write an article on the Lancia Jolly and there is absolutely nothing out there.
You know the truck you’re advertising is pretty basic when one of the selling points is that it has TWO windscreen wipers!
Reminds me of whenever GAZ would facelift the Volga line in the ’90s or ’00s and put out press releases highlight the new exterior door handle design, or the new side mirror shape, or the new turn signal stalk, all to distract from the fact that it was still fundamentally the same car from the 1960s. When you’ve only got minor details to talk about, you had better play them up as much as you can
Life sure was different before safety standards.
I rode in one of these, once. No memories of what it was like. I’m only commenting because it was owned by a friend’s dad who had a shop behind a used car dealer whose window stickers said ‘Another quality car from Quality Cars’. That’s quality advertising.