Car of the Week: 1957 Jeep FC-150
The Jeep FC-150 was short-lived and not the prettiest thing around, but guys like Earl Pamperin still love ’em.
When Earl Pamperin shows up at a car show in his rare 1937 Willys sedan, he can be pretty sure it will be the only one there.
When the Juneau, Wis., resident decided he needed another unique orphan vehicle in his life, he wanted it to be as rare as his ’37. His shiny 1957 Willys FC-150 pickup definitely fills the bill. And not only are car and truck from the same Willys bloodline, they share a similar restoration story.
Both were a lot of work to bring back to their current condition. Pamperin has a huge and impressively equipped metal shop next door to his house, and years of experience under his belt after learning the metal-working trade in the U.S. Navy. He put all his know-how to good use in his restoration work, and the results have been impressive, to say the least.
“I liked them because they are rare, and they’re ugly,” chuckles Pamperin of his FC-150. “And ugly is beautiful!”
Pamperin said he had been looking for an FC-150 for a year before he found an ad for a 1957 model in a storage building in Montana. He visited with the seller on the phone and agreed to buy the truck before he ever saw it in the tin. He figured he could eventually fix whatever was wrong with it, and after his ’37 Willys project, he wasn’t afraid of a big challenge.
“I went out to Montana in February! We had already agreed on a price on the phone. They thought that it came out of an estate in Washington state ... The guy that had it had cancer and was selling it. He had about eight storage units and it had been sitting in one of them at least three years... He hadn’t done anything with it. And he rolled it out and the back was all full of stuff, of course. He had his neighbors come over and help get it up on my trailer.”
Pamperin said he called the seller a few months later, only to learn that, sadly, he had passed away. He never got to show the seller any of the time and effort he had invested in the truck, but the man would no doubt have been impressed.
Pamperin jokes that he’s only had the ’57 Jeep to one car show since he got it on the road last summer, but he’s still certain that he won’t run into many others in the future.
“My friend Dan has one. He bought it from a guy in Rochester [Minn.] and it’s as rough as mine was,” he laughs. “That’s, I guess, the only other one that I know of. Mostly people, when they see it, say something like, ‘I didn’t know Jeep made anything like this.’ But the guys that know them, they ask you, ‘Have you driven it much?’ meaning they know the problems with it!”
Forward Thinking
The major news at Willys in 1957 was the introduction of the Forward Control (FC) Jeep. It had a cab that resembled a van with a pickup or stake body behind it. It was a cab-over-engine design that resulted from several passenger-van prototypes done by famed designer Brooks Stevens. One of these is said to survive on the island estate of Henry Kaiser in upper Michigan. The production versions came as the FC-150, a 1/2-ton on an 81-inch wheelbase, and the FC-170, a one-ton with a 103-1/2-inch wheelbase. Willy’s L-head engines were used as power plants, with the 72-hp four used in the FC-150 and the 115-hp six for the FC-170.
The FC-150 debuted in dealer showrooms on Dec. 12, 1956, and although sales figures were modest — 6,637 examples sold the first year — the trucks generally received favorable reviews. They were unique, easy to maneuver and could handle a lot of different jobs. The 78-inch cargo box was very large for its time, and the FCs could climb like billy goats — Mechanix Illustrated found that they could handle 60-percent grades and still keep grinding. They used the same axles, transmission, transfer case and many other mechanical components as the CJ5, along with the F4 Hurricane engine, but the frame was different, as was the steering column and design.
Willys offered the FC-150 in several configurations and with plenty of optional equipment for farm and construction duty. The pickup version weighed in at 3,020 lbs. and carried a base price of $2,320. A stake-bed model was available and often had a heavy counterweight added between the rear frame members to increase traction when empty and descending a steep hill. With a gear ratio of 5.38:1, they were limited to about 50 mph and were definitely not four-lane-highway vehicles. But they were great for light construction work and farm chores. Some FC-150s found work as miniature fire or airport crash trucks. Plenty found employment plowing snow in the winter.
The FC-150 didn’t change much during its three-year run, which ended with 16,241 trucks built. In 1958, the trucks received a new, wider chassis with a stance of 48 inches. In the end, perhaps it was because the trucks didn’t evolve enough to last.
The FC-150s and their big brother FC-170s were built in such low numbers that it has helped their collector status, however. They are certainly scarce today, and nice examples such as Pamperin’s red ’57 are attention getters at any car show.
The Long Road Back
Pamperin took the better part of seven years to get his FC-150 back on the road and looking good. He farmed out the painting duties, seat upholstery and a lot of the wiring, but otherwise tackled all the work himself. Fortunately, he says the truck was mechanically better than it looked and he didn’t have to rebuild anything in the drivetrain. That meant he could focus most of his time on the truck’s cosmetics.
“The engine and transmission are original. I didn’t do anything with that. I didn’t even paint the engine… When I got it, there was a plastic gas jug that they had been sucking [gas] out of behind the passenger’s seat, so I knew they had it running,” he noted. “I was going to try to make it original, but I wanted to have a 6-volt alternator because I added an electric fan, and I needed the alternator because the generator wasn’t going to be able to handle that fan.”
Pamperin did plenty of messaging and fabricating to get the corners of the cab looking good. Ditto on the rear fenders, which are notorious for breaking down on the FCs. He rebuilt the tailgate and did some work straightening the driver’s side door that had bent and damaged the sheet metal ahead of the hinge area. He went with a sprayed-in bedliner in the back just in case he ever actually wants to haul anything around.
“I was going to make it my parts vehicle,” he jokes. “[The bedliner] covers up any kind of mistakes that aren‘t finished out … If you know any truck drivers, where do they put their stuff? They drop the tailgate and drop it right here!”
The checked cloth upholstery that Pamperin went with certainly adds to the truck’s personality.
“That’s close to what was in it,” he says. “It may have been reupholstered sometime in the past, I don’t know. The pattern we used is similar to what it had, with smaller checks.”
The rearview mirrors on the doors are from “a late-’70s or early-’80s Chevy,” he says, and were added strictly for safety reasons. The 15-inch wheels are shod with slightly higher-profile tires than standard. “It helps with the gearing a little bit if you have a little higher tire, I suppose,” he says. “But again, the purists would not agree!”
Aside from a temperamental thermostat, Pamperin says the ’57 FC-150 has been a reliable runner. It starts every time and so far the gremlins have been minimal.
“These carburetors are not the greatest. The F -heads are an oddball thing. You know, if they didn’t stick around very long, they couldn’t have been that great. One guy told me, ‘I’d never have one of those engines again, I could never get it running right!’”
ATVs and mini-utility vehicles are all the rage these days, both as work and play vehicles. In that way, Pamperin figures the FC-150s were far ahead of their time.
“It’s more like what they used Gators for. That’s what I think,” he says. “You can throw a 6-foot fence post back there. They had a power take-off and a gearbox would be mounted and you could run auxiliary tools on it like a circle saw for sawing firewood and stuff like that."
“It’s like driving a bus. You are way ahead of the steering, you know? And it’s so short, you have to be careful when you back up that you don’t get your back end in the wrong spot. … And you can’t really see that well behind you. It’s so short you don’t have much vehicle back there.”
Pamperin has a couple of other project vehicles in his pipeline now, in addition to a custom 1939 Ford one-ton truck. He knows there are plenty of collectors and Jeep enthusiasts who would be happy to talk him into selling his FC-150, but the idea of watching all those hours of hard work drive off with somebody else behind the wheel is a little hard to swallow.
“I’m thinking I’ll hang onto this one, unless someone would twist my arm really, really hard,” he says. “I’m not that crazy about getting asked if something is for sale… I’d like to tell them, if you learn the skills, do the search for one, and then do the research and restore it, then you’d have one!”
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