Junkyard Gem: 1963 International C-1000 Pickup

Chicago’s International Harvester Corporation began selling light trucks in 1907, continuing until the last IHC Scout Terras were built as 1980 models. International pickup production ran through 1975, with postwar models including the K/KB-Series, L-Series, R-Series, S-Series, A/B-Series, C-Series and D-Series. Today’s Junkyard Gem is a C-Series half-ton, found in a northeastern Colorado self-service boneyard recently.

International Harvester was dismantled and reorganized during the 1980s, but you can still buy International trucks made by Navistar International (now owned by Volkswagen Group) to this day.

The International C-Series truck (which included the Travelall proto-SUV and Travelette crew-cab pickup) was built for the 1961 through 1964 model years, and IHC was proud to advertise that it “hadn’t gone soft” like the competition.

Since it was “designed by truck men to do a truck job,” the C-Series could be purchased with “man-sized” V8 engines. This one has the base 240-cubic-inch pushrod straight-six, though, with its 141 horsepower and 224 pound feet.

The transmission is a three-on-the-floor manual. A three-speed automatic transmission was available, as was four-wheel-drive.

You couldn’t get air conditioning in the ’63 C-Series, but you did get enviably simple heater/vent/defroster controls.

You had to pay extra for the heater. It took until the early 1970s for heaters to be standard equipment in U.S.-market cars and light trucks (due to regulations requiring a windshield defroster that blew heated air).