Wagon Living Product ideas!

I was looking at the pictures (saves 1,000's of words, Stefan ) in the two Ford 'Station Wagon Living' books and I had an idea. What about reproducing some for the Wagon collector markets?

Some of those tents might be good, but that baby rack and the tailgate kitchen counter, and the roof-rack boat mounting rail would be neat goodies for going to the car shows.

Baby Carseat highchair/jolly-jumper:


Check out that boat rail on the yellow wagon roof rack - upper right corner):


And this Chuck Wagon counter:


With today's materials, or even old-school materials, a person could make a decent retirement living.

Tent's aren't that tough either. Lots of companies make custom tent poles, and today's nylon blends are lighter and stronger. The CUV guys would drool.

It's that coffee maker that could be a bit tough - "Honey for gawd's sake start the car first!" Or we'll have to haul out the solar battery charger again (or paint the panel on the roof? - whole new meaning to sunroof, huh?)

 

Solar power on the roof: The sun produces about 480 watts by 9:00 AM and about 1,100 watts by noon, and 700 watts by 7:00 PM, for a surface of 1 square meter (1.1 sq. yds.) We've got twice that on our Fairmont roofs, and you guys with the full-size probably have 3 sq yds (1,300 watts, for hot perked coffee in a camping ground!)

You can buy a solar trickle charger for about $60. or a 1 sq metre panel for about $300. OR you can buy the solar coating for about $200 per gallon. Paint it on a demountable surface (probably nylon or plexiglass) and run a microwave (500 to 800 watts).

Heck we drop $150 in speakers without thinking about it! But this would be a real 'bragging rights' option.

 

I could see DOT now with the baby cradle and wooden car stand or metal car seat nowadays the State Troopers would fall over with a heart attack then bury the parents under the jail and call child services.

I could see making and selling a lot of the other stuff in a more modern form and really start seeing the states in a old fashion way no Interstates...

 

Just replica accessories for wagon shows. Except for the Chuck Wagon kitchen. You could even build a real woodie wagon and call it 'Chuck's Wagon. Not Chucky Cheese, puhleese.

 

That would fit the older and much more beautiful wagons of the 50's and early 60's wagons and cars which is a good market.

 

Or laying down the rear dash in a 4 door.

 

No it sure wouldn't.They would go into a Conniption.

 

PC safety....how ever did we all survive to be this old??
cool stuff ..eh Normin?

 

We're the last of the Hand's On Ingenuity generation. We had to be or else!

 

Hmmmm, I don't agree......

 

How so?

Going back 35 years or even 20 years ago, you could buy handtools without digital circuits that lasted long enough to pass onto their sons. Now the rugged stuff sells for double the consumer stuff and is made to throw away after 2 or 3 years. The best bodyshop tools are still the old style hammers and bodyman's shapers. You can't find decent-priced air-compressor that the motor IS NOT belt-driven by an ordinary electric motor that you could replace. The tanks are thin-walled steel that rusts out after a couple years.

A lot of the so-called improvements, improved the means to make stuff last less time, meaning that the key improvement was planned obsolescence. With new tool formats, the tradesman barely gets to 'know' his tools' potentials and limits, making him go back for more training, to do a job that his decades of experience become redundant.

I think it started with European tradesmen, that a new carpenter's apprentice would become a journeyman until his hammers look older than he did. Well-experienced.

All the time spent searching for a simple, direct method to do something with materials has increased exponentially with the need to acquire a variety of 'small-step' tools, books, computer programs, and training, only to build homes that won't last 100 years, cars that need a black-belt in electronics, the month of manufacture, as well as the year, and time for the parts to come into a dealer-only shop to be repaired.

Is that the background you had in mind, to my broad-brush tarnishing of modern-day ingenuity?