Riding Bike - page 78

When putting together a book it's hard to decide what goes in, and what doesn't fit.  In the section "Dealers and Shops" of Riding Bike there's a photo of an interesting looking pickup owned by a Portland motorcycle shop called "American-British Cycle."  Here's part of the story behind that truck that didn't fit in the book.

"This was a pickup truck made from a car.  This car was built years before Ford built the Ranchero and Chevrolet brought out the el Camino. Jack Warner and Fuzzy Ball had a shop called American British Motorcycles and they originally wanted a truck that was useful to haul motorcycles. "

"Rudy Rehbein was a body man from Estacada.  They wanted him to make a flatbed with a piece of plywood behind the driver’s area. He said 'No.' If he was going to do it he was going to make it nicer.
He used the Cadillac sheet metal and blended in the back of a '51 Chev pickup cab and then they had Cadillac rear fenders on there. I don’t remember if it had a tailgate but it would carry three motorcycles."

"The car was so well done it won the Custom car class in the 1952 New Car Dealers Expo show and it was featured in Rod & Custom magazine."

"The American British Motorcycles shop lasted about a year and then the pickup was sold down to California to a motorcycle club."

"I (Drake) wrote an article about it for Old Cars Weekly, and I heard from a friend that Cliff Majhor, the Sandy Bandit, said I had everything wrong. So I called him up to set the record straight.  I had said that there were three bullet holes in the back of the cab when the police shot at it.  He corrected me and said there were four."