Sold for: $ 14,175

There’s something prepossessing about being surrounded by 19 square feet of glass while sitting aloft over the front wheels. The cab is 79.3 inches tall. Stranahan’s 1958 Willys Jeep FC-170 is unique. The FC part of the name designates “forward control.” This cab-over-engine design had long been applied to heavy-duty trucks, but Willys brought it to the light-duty market when its Jeep FC-150 compact truck was introduced on Nov. 27, 1956. “They were narrow, underpowered, unstable and hard to work on,” said Stranahan, an architect in Ann Arbor, Mich. “They rusted. The bed was too short. They were primitive. I can show you some staggering examples.” The longer and more powerful FC-170 followed on May 20, 1957. The Jeep brand belonged to the Willys-Overland Co. after the longtime Toledo, Ohio, automaker churned out general-purpose military vehicles during World War II. Willys-Overland merged with Kaiser-Frazer Corp. in 1953, and although Willys passenger cars were phased out, Jeeps continued to be marketed for that make. Wanting a piece of the growing market for light trucks, the company adapted the Jeep chassis, creating the tall cab and narrow pickup box on the existing mechanical layout. “It was an interesting idea to begin with and quickly proved to be a bad idea,” Stranahan said. “But they stubbornly, doggedly stuck with it.” FC-series trucks were produced through 1964, but never in large quantities. One source shows 9,796 FC-170 units produced in the first full model year of 1957. They were almost equally divided among regular pickups, stake-bed trucks and cabs sold with bare chassis that were later fitted with dump boxes, wreckers or other utility bodies. Farmers, service station operators and rural fire and rescue departments were ready customers. While the configuration is nose-heavy — or, as Stranahan puts it, “The center of gravity is ridiculously far forward” — the FC-170 is pretty much unstoppable in snow when four-wheel drive is engaged, making it an excellent plow vehicle