It's true that Ford blazed one of the earliest trails into the factory-built pickup truck market by offering, in 1925, an optional cargo box for the Model T Runabout. But commercial body manufacturer Galion, among others, built and sold add-on pickup beds for Lizzie several years prior to that. 

Ditto for four-wheel drive--which has become ubiquitous on light-trucks today. Ford didn't officially get into the four-wheel-drive pickup business until 1959, when it first offered its F-100 and F-250 with a live front axle and divorced transfer case. Prior to that, aftermarket companies like Marmon-Herrington, NAPCO, and American-Coleman gave Ford trucks their go-anywhere capability. 

More than 80 percent of F-150s sold today are equipped with Ford's four-door SuperCrew cab--the preferred configuration of buyers with families. But prior to 1965, Ford didn't build a four-door truck, and the demand for additional passenger room from utilities, logging companies, railroads, the military, and others was met by aftermarket coachbuilders. 

Among the firms performing these crew cab conversions--on not just Fords but virtually every make of light truck--was Crown Steel Products of Orrville, Ohio. In addition to building crew cab pickups, Crown built utility bodies, sleeper cabs for heavy trucks, and more. 

This month's feature truck, an unusual 1966 Ford crew cab F-250 four-wheel-drive, was converted to a four-door by Crown. The fact that the work was performed on an uplevel Custom Cab rather than a baseline truck makes it more unusual, as does the original color, Caribbean Turquoise

Early crew cab conversions didn't involve altering the truck's chassis. Instead, body panels were cut and stitched back together to fit the existing frame rails, thus avoiding a lot of expensive and time-consuming work--like extending the driveshaft and brake lines or plating frame rails. The cab was sectioned and elongated, rear doors were fabricated out of front doors and mounted on exposed hinges, then the front of the box was chopped to compensate for the length of the cab.

The 1966 model year marked the last for Ford's handsome fourth-generation F-Series trucks. This design, which was launched in 1961, is most widely remembered for the "integral cab and box" trucks that were discontinued after 1963 (they were unpopular at the time, but a favorite with collectors today). This generation also introduced the Twin I-Beam independent coil spring front suspension under two-wheel drives, beginning in 1965. Incidentally, the integral body was never available on a 4x4 chassis, and four-wheel drives used leaf springs fore and aft as well as heavy-duty Dana axles. 

For 1966, the standard light-truck engine was the thrifty 240-cu.in. straight-six with a one-barrel carburetor that was good for 150 hp, but buyers could opt for the 170-hp 300 six-cylinder or the 208-hp 352 V-8. Automatic transmissions weren't available with four-wheel drive, and a Warner T89F three-speed was the base offering, but buyers could step up to a New Process 435 four-speed gearbox. A divorced Spicer Model 24 two-speed transfer case sent the power to the front axle and, in three-quarter-ton rigs, a set of stump-pulling 4.56:1 cogs were standard issue. 

Lawrence Ames of San Francisco, California, and Scott Tonn of Phoenix, Arizona, have co-owned this rugged crew cab F-250 since 1981. It was restored to show-winning condition at Vintage Auto Repair in Phoenix, Arizona, during a three-year project that wrapped up in April 2016. "I was a freshman at the University of California, Davis, at the time," Lawrence said. "I was with friends driving back from a houseboat trip on Lake Berryessa, when, driving through Winters, California, I saw the truck and fell in love with it on sight." 

The next day, Lawrence returned to Winters and learned that the truck belonged to the owner of the local Ford dealership. "I talked him into selling it to me," he said. "It has been sheer joy ever since. It really was the coolest looking vehicle that I had ever seen." 

The truck served Lawrence, Scott, and their buddies well on hunting trips, off-road excursions and other adventures. "The truck became an integral part of our university experience," Lawrence said. "We would take it to Nevada to hunt rabbits. There would be nine of us in the truck: three in the front, four in the back seat, and two in the bed. This was during the dead of winter, but the guys in the bed had a bottle of Jack Daniels to stay warm! We would drive to Smith Valley, shoot rabbits all day and well into the night, then camp and come back the next day with all of our rabbits strung up on the brush guard. It was a sight to behold! During the great Central Valley flood of March 1986, I spent the days driving around, pulling cars out of ditches with this truck." 

Prior to its extensive makeover, the truck was scruffy but very intact and mostly rust free. The paint was faded, rust had dug into a section of the roof, the drivetrain and chassis were grimy, and the seat upholstery was threadbare. The crew at Vintage Auto Repair removed the cab and box from the chassis, sent out the frame and hard parts for powdercoating, sent the 352 V-8 out for a rebuild (as well as the NP435 gearbox and transfer case), and prepped the body for a new finish in modern urethane paint. 

One of the biggest challenges of the project turned out to be finding the correct seat upholstery, as reproduction covers were unavailable. "We found the company that made the original seat material and the hot-stamped Ford logo that went on the seats," Lawrence said. "That material took forever to get." They also tracked down an NOS 1966 air conditioning setup for the truck to make its spacious cab more comfortable in the warm weather. 

Lawrence said he's glad to see the truck in better-than-new condition, and is as taken with it today as he was back in 1981. "The restoration really has been a labor of love for all involved," he said. "In my opinion, the visual effect of the custom cab modifications is nothing short of stunning--balanced and poised, while showing strength and a willingness to get to work."