1947 Crosley ‘Roundside’ Pickup
Constructed by removing the roofline and rear section of Crosley’s new CC sedan and fitting a pickup bed in their place, the 1947 Roundside was one of the more distinctive light trucks of the late 1940s.
The conversion retained the sedan’s rounded rear fender panels (the source of the model’s name), and the body design came from the Michigan firm of Sundberg-Ferar. Crosley had taken the unusual step of redesigning its entire lineup from scratch after the war rather than returning to prewar styling.
Riding on an 80-inch wheelbase and weighing roughly 1,180 lbs, the Roundside carried a quarter-ton (500 lb) payload behind a drop tailgate. Power came from Crosley’s CoBra (Copper Brazed) overhead cam engine, a 44.2 cubic-inch inline-four producing 26.5 hp, paired with a three-speed manual transmission.
It was among the first mass-produced overhead cam engines offered in a postwar American passenger car, and fuel economy could reach around 50 mpg under ideal conditions. Crosley offered the Roundside for the 1947 model year only; from 1948, pickups shifted to the wider station wagon-based platform with flat rear panels.
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