Memories from the past! A transporter owned by a Davidson College fraternity brother that burned up in 1969 as he was about to leave to join the Peace Corps. Two New Orleans friends, Donald Keintz and Dawson Nesbitt, who owned them. Poor Donald struggled mightily to keep his alive. A fire in one in Baltimore in the 1990s, where I stuck my head in the burning vehicle to save someone's books!
Sad to say, but production ended in Brazil of the Type 2 December 31, 2013. Precautions concerning safety trumped practical transportation and tradition.
How many of you know how a controversy ( The Chicken War") over the Type 2 in 1964 led to import duties so high that it all but guaranteed the dominance of the Detroit 3 in the light truck industry? Seems that the EEC wanted to keep out American chicken out of France and West Germany and increased duties. President Lyndon Johnson retaliated by among other things slapping a 25% import duty on light trucks. The duty has never gone away, but it discouraged truck imports, first from Germany, then Japan. The advantage fell to the Ford F-150 and Chevy Silverado, and the only way for foreign makes to compete was to built plants in the U.S., like Toyota did in San Antonio.
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