Newspaper Article

[Mark Sierant]

For those who are in Australia there is an artical in the motoring section of the the Telegraph. The story is a bit of nostalga on the use of CMP post war in rural Australia and has a nice CMP cartoon representation.

[Richard Farrant]

Originally posted by Mark Sierant
For those who are in Australia there is an artical in the motoring section of the the Telegraph. The story is a bit of nostalga on the use of CMP post war in rural Australia and has a nice CMP cartoon representation.

Mark,
That would no doubt be written by the infamous Warren Brown, a mv collector himself, who accompanied me on the Normandy D-Day tour in June.

Any chance of a scan on here as it does not come up on the Telegraph web site.

Richard

[Tony Smith]

Hmm, Richard, your'e right. I can't find the article in the Telegraph's site or the liftout section's section, the carsguide.com.au
Warren Brown also did an article a few weeks ago on Lang Kidby's Dodge and it's trip to Normandy, so I sort of guessed he had an "Inside Source" in the MV scene. Never guessed it might be a serial frequenter of MLU! So, here's the article by WARREN BROWN from Sydney's DAILY TELEGRAPH as appeared in the CARS GUIDE liftout. (Hope that indicates the source).

"BLITZ BLAST FROM THE LOST PAST"

"In a curious way,country towns were once a bit like going to any chain of fast-food restaurants - you might not have actually been there before, but you knew exactly what you were going to get.
This offered you some form of reassurance at least, in that there was never going to be any surprises.
Country towns were more or less laid out in the same way - a main street lined with dusty shopsoperating at the pace of geological change, several pubs in varying degrees of operation indicating the town once had a heyday and parked outside was a line-up of the usual suspects from the rural automotive world.
The Holden ute with all the prerequisites - a whip antenna the size of a giant Sequioia bolted to the bullbar, Caterpillar mudflaps as wide as doormats and B&S Ball stickers advertising conquests from Condo to Katherine in much the same way as a Battle of Britain pilot chalks another cross on the fuselage after a sucessful sortie.
The experienced car spotter always looked for the Landcruiser ute, the grey Series IIA Landrover long wheelbase, the big old square Slim Dusty model Fairlane and maybe catch a glimpse of the incredibly robust, two wheel drive Toyota Stout table-top truck (which for some reason, only seemed to be available in Sherwood Forest green).
But things have changed. As the big smoke pushes out into the wilds, bringing flash, cruise-controlled turbo-Diesel blowins, these native bush vehicles are on the endangered list. Perish the thought, but if we don't act soon, they might soon go the way of that once great king of the Australian bush motoring - the Ford and Chev Blitz.
The Blitz was once a familiar, almost mandatory sight in outback Australia.
From banana plantations in the sub-tropics at Murwillumbah to the mail run at Maree in the Simpson. From fighting fires at Forbes to carting hay at... well, Hay, the Blitz was pressed into service by rural Australians to perform duties well above and beyond it's intended role.
The Blitz, or it's correct nomenclature, the CMP (Canadian Military Pattern) truck, started life in the dark days of WWII when Britain was clutching at it's dominions to produce much-needed material and as a result, Chevrolet and Ford Canada began cranking out these right-hand-drive pug-faced beauties by the shipload.
The Chev came with an overhead valve six-cylinder engine and the Ford, a side-valve V8. Available in all sorts of sizes with two-, four- and six-wheel drive, Blitzes were also built locally, the Australian version by Holden, five years before the 48/215 sedan was blessed by PM, Ben Chifley.
The nickname Blitz is an Australian concoction. A theory about how the name came about is because the windscreen is raked forward, the Luftwaffe couldn't see the dashboard lights from above.
Even Slim Dusty, in a sequel to his famous The Pub with no Beer , blames the catastrophic predicament on a Blitz: "... Stands the old grey Blitz Wagon, the one with beer..."
Post-war, new four-wheel drive trucks were impossible for farmers to buy, so the acres of surplus WWII trucks ready to start life in civvies were snapped up.
They were slow, they were ugly, they were cramped, they were heavy, they were hot. But they were reliable, strong and nearly unbreakable. Nearly, that is.
Sawmillers used them as timber jinkers, piled high with monstrous tree trunks that could crack the chassis in two, which was no problem - after some bush welding the Blitz would do it all again.
Banana plantation owners discovered if they parked the truck on some dramatic angle on an almost vertical hillside, the crankcase had trouble getting oil which meant the bearings spat the dummy.
The Blitz working days are practically over now and even local Bushfire Brigades that drove the trucks to hell and back look on them now as a distant memory.
So next time, when you're out in the bush, look for that rusting, ugly, boxer-faced shell rotting in the blackberries - spare a thought for a true Aussie battler."

While some terms might need translating for Non-Australians (You've never drunk Bundy 'til you've been to a B&S!), the general theme is easy to understand.

[Richard Farrant]

Tony,

Thank you for taking the trouble to copy Warren's article, always an entertaining read. He started writing about the Normandy tour from the day we left home in my Bedford QL, I read some of the first few days work and it was enlighting to see how someone else looks at things which to you are a relatively normal happening. His visit to a local English pub describing the beer, saying that if you drunk too much "you would end up wearing a flat cap driving a tractor".

Richard