Thames Utilicon

When this lovely Utilicon rolled off the production line in Dagenham in 1956, Ford probably never in a million years expected it to exist today because it was simply a workhorse for the era.

This Thames E83 would’ve marketed not as the Utilicon, but as a Fordson - the Utilicon was simply an option for which it could be supplied and in fact, the E83 was available in many forms including chassis cowl, van and in fact; the idea was to give the commercial buyer a vehicle which could be absolutely anything from ice cream van to even a fire engine.

In fact, it was so versatile, Ford marketed the Utilicon as we see here today with the strap line ‘from four seater saloon to van in 60 seconds’. If you’re wondering if that’s true or not, I’ll show you later on.

It is perhaps worth noting at this point, that the Export or Die ethos we’ve discussed in other videos concerning cars made directly after the Second World War, also applied to Ford’s plant at Dagenham.

With this policy, it essentially meant to access the steel, which was owned by the government, you had to export a high quota of vehicles overseas to help boost the country’s economy post-war.

Therefore if you’re watching this in Australia, you may know it as the Ten-Ten and some countries only received this model as cowl and chassis, relying on local coach builders in various nations to build the bodies to accompany.

Today you may not see many of these, or even any of these, at a specialist classic car show but they were made for quite some time: from 1938 until 1957. They were part of Britain’s heritage and landscape; making up the numbers on fleets from small businesses through to large commercial outfits.

However they weren’t the speediest vehicle on the road with their 1,172cc side valve engine and three speed box, so as they reached their twilight years of production and were still being used second and third hand into the 60s and 70s, it must’ve been frustrating to get stuck behind one if you were late for work because realistically, the top speed is much over 40 miles per hour.

You may be wondering what it takes to keep something like this on the road - well - it’s not the easiest of your classic Fords. This is because although the engine is shared with other Fords, many other parts are not and if you’re after a headlight? Well, they were shared with the E27N tractor and were only an optional extra, so even a light can be a tricky find.

To me, that makes this vehicle even more special for all the efforts people have gone to to keep it here today.

And if you’re wondering how this survived, well it spent a good number o years as a humble decorators van before being purchased in the mid 70s by a previous owner who decided to do a bit of tidying up and uncovered who the first owners might be: the government - because across the nearside wing it read Property of the home office.

The car is sold on a few times, pre internet it’s hard to keep a track of where things end up and then in 2008 it was purchased by John Wilson - a dear friend of current owner Simon.

John was retired and it meant he could put countless hours into the vehicle, which had arrived as a sorry shell, and he gently transformed it into a useable van which he then used until 2017 when he passed away.

Today, Simon still uses this van and sees it as a tribute to a close friend who would definitely be delighted to see the van not only used - but improved - because Simon has continued to work on the van and replaced sections of the ash framing.