Classic Ford F-Series pickup trucks are quite desirable nowadays, but they’re not rare or very valuable. In fact, most of these rigs are turned into restomods rather than restored to original specifications. Well, there’s one fourth-generation F-Series that’s so rare it took a barn find hunter two years to uncover.
This 1966 F-100 may look like a regular truck at first glance, but it’s actually part of a handful of pickups that were modified for Sleeping Bear Dune rides. Now a national park, the Sleeping Bear Dunes extends along a 35-mile (56-km) stretch of Lake Michigan’s eastern coastline, including the North and South Manitou islands.
These trucks were part of the Warnes family fleet, which began providing Dunesmobile rides to tourists in the early 1930s. The dune was difficult to navigate on foot, so tourists were more than happy to pay for a thrilling 35-minute ride that took them to the crest of the dunes and back. The Dunesmobiles used balloon tires.
Louis Warner provided dune runs for more than 40 years, using various automobiles. In the 1960s, he decided to replace the convertible cars he was using with F-100 pickup trucks. He purchased five of them and commissioned a local shop to extend the bed by 24 inches (610 mm) and remove the roof. The trucks then had their beds fitted with seats for a capacity of up to 16 passengers.
The trucks were used until the late 1970s when concerns for the health of the dune ecosystem prompted the National Park Service to ban vehicles from the site. The pickups were then repurposed as Manitou Island maintenance vehicles before they were sold for very little money.
The F-100s ended up as workhorses in private hands, and two went missing. This pickup is one of only three that survived, and it’s the only one with the original “Sleeping Bear Dunesmobile” script on the body. It’s also the sole example that had its roof welded back on.
The truck was found by Hagerty’s Tom Cotter, a barn find hunter and expert. The search took a whopping two years. Just as he was about to give up, someone who had just bought a property posted a derelict F-100 on social media. It was the truck Tom worked so hard to track down.
Presumably sitting since 1998 (that’s 26 years as of 2024), the F-100 was found with weathered paint, lots of rust, and traces of a lumber-hauling career. But that didn’t stop Mr. Cotter from getting the old straight-six engine running and the truck driving. Hopefully, that’s only the first step toward a proper revival that includes at least a partial restoration. Until that happens, see this historically significant pickup spring back to life in the video below.