Petersen Archive- Powell’s Holy Grail: The Powell Sport Wagon

Article by Kristin Feay

The Holy Grail, Atlantis, Blackbeard’s treasure. For what seems like countless years the world’s adventurers and explorers have searched for elusive treasures. From flying automobiles to nuclear-powered conveyances, the automotive world also has had its share of similar seemingly mythical wonders. In the February 1956 issue of Motor Trend, magazine editor Walt Woron would identify yet another lofty goal, namely, a car that was both affordable and practical—he would describe this vehicle simply as “the elusive $1000 car.”

In the mid-1950s, brothers Channing and Hayward Powell, would undertake the quest to sell such a car, “building what they advertised, as ‘America’s 1st car produced to sell below $1000,’” a total which amounts to just around $10,900 today.

At their factory in Compton, California, however, the Powell brothers would take a different approach than many conventional brands in building their bargain vehicle. This was because as Motor Trend noted “even tho the vehicle departments register the Powell as a new car, it is a used car, or at best a rebuilt one.” Indeed, rather than utilize a new engine and purpose-built chassis, the Sport Wagon was crafted from revitalized components sourced from 1941 Plymouths.

Though the concept of sourcing parts from retired vehicles was not unfamiliar in the hot rodding and customization scenes at the time, Powell sought not to make a hopped up version of the vehicle on which it was based, but an entirely new model. To explain this concept to the perhaps skeptical reader who might imagine the pickup’s makeup of used car parts as “a major consideration in comparing the Powell against the cheapest-model Detroit pickup,” the magazine included a feature explaining the vehicle’s means of manufacture.

The Powell’s journey started at the company’s factory in Compton, “with used Plymouth chassis from which all unusable parts are scrapped.”

Powell looked similarly to Plymouth for their Sport Wagon’s engine. Plymouth 6 engines ranging in vintage from 1940 to 1950 were selected to provide the pickup’s power. As Channing Powell would point out to Motor Trend, the company’s concern “wasn’t in the age of the engines but in their condition; they have strict limits on allowable bore wear, etc.” To render them fit for use in the Sport Wagon, workers would rebuild the engines before the powerplants were “dropped into the chassis.”

This chassis was crafted from that of a disassembled 1941 Plymouth, which was re-aligned and inspected for worn out parts, which were replaced as needed. 

The Powell’s body panels were formed and fabricated at the factory. This design which Woron commended as being “a smart combination of manufacturing ease and pleasing appearance,” embraced both economy and ease of repair. Its distinctly linear look was designed by Channing and Hayward Powell to be simple to produce, avoiding “compound curves that require costly dies.” Workers formed most of these panels from heavy gauge steel, while the front of the truck was fiberglass.

For final assembly these “formed body and fender parts” were welded together in a jig. The truck’s fiberglass front was ostensibly added later on in the process. “After the body is in place,” it would get a coating of baked enamel, available in white, yellow, red, or green. Finally, workers would drive each car “to make sure that it doesn’t have any faults peculiar to it alone.”

As demonstrated by Channing and Howard Powell, the completed Sport Wagon revealed a number of interesting utilitarian accents. In addition to a standard truck bed, the pickup featured multiple “hiding places,” like a “long cylindrical drawer” that slid out to become a tubular storage container for fishing rods, and a compartment for a spare tire concealed under the deck.

After rolling off the assembly line, and out of the Powell factory, the next step the journey of one of these lucky pickups, was to showcase how the newly minted model would perform under the pressure of a Motor Trend road test.

Highlighting its origins as a passenger car, Woron’s first impression of the Powell “after a long weekend spent combing the back roads” was that it offered “a compromise between a pickup and passenger car,” noting his surprise at “the softness of the air-foam seat.” The interior layout he described featured “plenty of elbow room around the small diameter wheel” as well as gauges which, printed with white text on a black background “make for extremely good day or night legibility.” 

Reflecting the pickup’s utilitarian personality, its interior featured what Woron characterized simply as a “stark panel” with a single vacuous rectangular void as a glove compartment. Its windshield “couldn’t possibly distort” as Woron noted “it’s flat, ‘like the good old days.’”

As for its driving performance, Woron commended the recycled pickup’s “easy steering and compact size” which would “allow you to get around in traffic quite handily.” Its rebuilt engine performed with “adequate acceleration” while “the brakes operate smoothly.” Its ride, which produced “some wallowing coming out of dips and over bumps” was “much more of a passenger car than of a pickup truck.” 

Though he noted that the Powell was more suited to the fair-weather California environment in which it was produced, in his 1956 review Woron commended that the vehicle “held up quite satisfactorily throout [throughout] the hard backwoods trip.” Though it shared more characteristics with a passenger car than a utilitarian vehicle, Woron ultimately concluded that the Powell had “most of the advantages of a pickup truck without many of the disadvantages.” 

Seen in retrospect, the Powell also reflected a unique perspective on post-war automotive construction. Built between the retreating shadow of World War II and the dawn of the American post-war economy, the pickup represented a mix of pre- and post-war economic realities. In the means of its construction, the home-grown vehicle, built out of existing parts, spoke to an era of wartime rationing and materials shortages, in which items like metals used in automobile construction were scarce and citizens were compelled to craft their own goods in place of those they would regularly find on store shelves.

In its design, and the very fact that their company had endeavored to market a new vehicle to the public, however, the Powell brothers’ enterprise reflected the optimistic attitude of the burgeoning mid-century American economy. Though Europe would continue to feel the economic devastation of World War II long after its conclusion, by the mid-1950s when the Powell Sport Wagon was introduced, the American economy would experience a period of rapid growth, in which the Gross National Product (GNP) would grow to nearly 250% its pre-war size. A concurrent, and insatiable, consumer demand for new vehicles would drive the creation of new, exciting automobiles like the Chevrolet Corvette, which was, incidentally, featured on the very cover of the February 1956 issue of Motor Trend in which Woron would chronicle his views of the humble Sport Wagon.

With these two perspectives as context, Channing and Hayward Powell set out to create a unique and, as Woron would describe, somewhat mythical car that would sell for under the “magical one-grand figure.” Unfortunately for the company, like most manufacturers who sought to produce such a vehicle from scratch, “costs mounted upward like a mushroom pushing its way thru the cracking earth.” Though the Powell brothers projected in Motor Trend that increased production numbers would lower the cost of their Wagon, at a price of a mere $95 over their target, the Powell Sport Wagon was quite a noble attempt.

By Kristin Feay

Photography by Bob D’Olivo and Walt Woron