Futurliner No. 5 resurrected as a car hauler, comes up for sale.

There wasn’t much left of the Futurliner that arrived at Brad Boyajian’s place in 2002. Rust had gnawed away at it over the previous half century, parts were missing, and the deal that brought it to Brad meant that the Futurliner would be separated from even more of its parts. There was little hope for a restoration, but Brad still saw potential in it, and now has put the result of that vision up for sale.

According to Brad, the previous owner, a man in Long Beach, California, had torn the Futurliner apart for a restoration, but ran out of money before he could make any progress. The team restoring the NATMUS Futurliner – Futurliner No. 10 – then waist deep in that truck’s restoration and still in need of some parts to finish it, caught wind of it and ended up working out a deal with Brad: In exchange for retrieving the Futurliner – which Brad identified as No. 5 – and stripping off the parts that the NATMUS team needed, Brad would keep the rest of it for parts to restore his other two Futurliners.

Along with some hardware and trim, the NATMUS team took the complete dual-wheel front axle assembly. The complete rear section of the Futurliner, including its rear axle, remained in good shape, so Brad cut them off and set them aside to use for the restoration of Futurliner No. 8, which had been rear-ended in an accident during the latter days of the General Motors Parade of Progress (and which has since traveled to Sweden for a full restoration). Most of the center section was far too rusted to be saved, so Brad scrapped it, leaving him with just the cab section and front sheetmetal, not a whole lot to work with.

Brad, who has plenty of heavy truck equipment on hand, still thought he could build something interesting with the remains of No. 5. He had a 1978 C.C.C. garbage truck hanging around that he didn’t have much use for, and plenty of other trucks he wanted to haul around to shows, so why not toss the Futurliner cab atop the garbage truck’s chassis and build one unique transporter out of the combination?

So over the last 10 years or so, as money and time allowed him, he did exactly that. Futurliner No. 5 now rides a 236-inch wheelbase on 20,000-pound air-sprung axles front and rear and gets its power from a Cummins NTC-230 855-cu.in. straight-six diesel engine running through an Allison 600-series five-speed transmission. Brad said the Cummins is substantially larger than the GMC straight-six gasoline engine that previously powered Futurliner No. 5, so to make it easy to work on the engine once installed, he converted the Futurliner front section into a tilt cab. At the same time, he fabricated a new body section to house the radiator for the Cummins behind the cab, and he made sure to include seating for four and air conditioning inside the cab. While the GM lettering on the nose of the cab is original, Brad had to source a windshield from somebody in Canada who had four new ones cast.

Out back, he extended the lower-body ribbing into a clamshell rear that when closed hides the electric-over-hydraulic ramps that enclose about 29 total feet of bed. Though Brad said he’s not sure what the current weight rating of the transporter is now, his photos show it hauling some rather heavy loads, including an 8,800-pound 1937 White Yellowstone Park bus. “Whatever we can put on it, we can put on it,” he said. In addition to 200 gallons of fuel capacity, Brad said he installed a train horn, 12,500-watt Onan generator, and 240-volt flood lights.

Though he said it could probably use a little more insulation around the cabin, Brad took the opportunity to drive the Futurliner up the West Coast to the American Truck Historical Society’s Seattle meet earlier this year. “On a long trip, it’s not a Cadillac,” he said. “It’s controllable, though it’s more noisy than it is hot.” The worst part about the trip, though, the part that Brad said drove him crazy, had nothing to do with the Futurliner’s driving characteristics. “Every time I had to stop for fuel, I had crowds of people around me asking about it. On the highway, I had people get in front of me and slow way down to get a picture of it.”

Partly due to the excess attention it received, but mostly because he wants to fund the completion of his other truck projects, Brad put the Futurliner up for sale in the February 2014 issue of Hemmings Motor News with an asking price of $1.25 million. That places it somewhere in between the reported $247,500 that Boyajian got for the unrestored Futurliner No. 3 in 2011 and the $4.1 million that Ron Pratte paid for a fully restored Futurliner in 2006. For more information, visit AmericanMovieTrucks.com.

Source:blog.hemmings.com