These days it is hard enough to resurrect a classic vehicle considering our universal constraints on time, energy, and folding money.  So, if that vehicle’s return to glory requires an additional type of hard-won talent, is it possible for the average enthusiast to take it on as a project?  Take for example this 1950 Plymouth woody wagon that faithful reader T.J. has found for us.  For sale on Facebook Marketplace, this forlorn Plymouth looks to be complete, but the wood bodywork is little more than kindling at this point.  Is this rare Plymouth worth restoring at an asking price of $8,500?

Wood-bodied station wagons were quite collectible at one time.  Major auction houses competed for excellent examples to roll across their auction blocks.  Luxury car magazines such as the duPont Registry often featured these distinctive pieces of Americana on their thick and glossy pages.  They brought big money back in the day.  Some even sold in the low six figures.  Then, as often happens in America, tastes changed and the market for this type of vehicle and their wood-clad automobile cousins got very soft very quickly.

What happened?  As mentioned, the market is fickle on its best day.  It may have also been that people figured out that the best ones had already been scooped up and that the examples that hadn’t been restored were difficult to bring up to a high standard.  The type of craftsman that can take a derelict wood-bodied vehicle apart, determine the proper dimensions of each part based on shrunken, dried, and rotten wood, and carefully assemble the new wood perfectly was always an endangered species.  When you consider that our ever-modernizing world has less and less use for such artisans, you can see how the few capable of resurrecting such a vehicle can pretty much name their price for their efforts.  That price probably exceeds the value of nearly any wood-bodied car you can find at this point.  This is not a job that a weekend warrior headed to Home Depot on Saturday morning should attempt.

You also have to consider that keeping the bodies of these cars in shape requires yearly maintenance.  That maintenance will be a lot more involved than going to town on the body with a can of Lemon Pledge and some old T-shirts.   Sanding and varnishing are not enjoyable pastimes.  One has to wonder why Detroit produced wood-bodied vehicles after World War II in the first place.  The technology was there to make steel-bodied wagons, and Willys successfully did just that.  It seems that the considerable amount of labor and financial outlay needed to produce these vehicles at the scale they were manufactured was rather nonsensical in hindsight.

Perhaps it was simply customer demand for such a vehicle.  Almost every flawed creature is beautiful in its own way, and there is nothing more handsome than the image of a woody wagon going about its work.  That work may be hauling surfboards and teenagers to a beach.  Or it is picking up passengers at a train station, with a bellowing steam locomotive in the background hooked up to a sleek line of aluminum passenger rail cars.  Perhaps the most beautiful is the sight of a woody wagon sitting next to a pond or a forest of trees, with a sportsman and their dog preparing for the day’s activities.  Maybe even with a picnic basket on the tailgate if that is how you imagine your heaven to be.

Sadly, this woody wagon is a pretty far distance away from heaven right now.  This 1950 Plymouth Deluxe wagon is crying out for a proper restoration.  The chassis and cowl look to be perfectly restorable.  Above, the picture shows the area where the engine formerly sat.  It is currently out of the car along with the transmission and described as “great.”  It was removed to shoehorn a Small Block Chevrolet V-8 in there somehow.  Fortunately, the torch hadn’t come out before the project was wisely abandoned by the looks of the cowl.  The only abuse it seems to have suffered was at the hands of someone with a paintbrush instead of a spray gun.

Other than the engine and transmission’s vague status, we don’t know much else about the car.  We are told that it is titled in Oregon and has a California tag.  It is described as having eight doors and three rows of seats.  The seat part makes sense, but the door part must be some of that Common Core math they teach in schools now.  It is hard to believe that the seller has spare woody wagon doors.  At any rate, the doors are stacked like cordwood inside the car, so it is hard to visually verify this.  What would be great is if the seller published pictures of the individual doors so prospective buyers could get an idea of how much is left to form patterns.

All and all, this is a desirable car at a tempting price.  If you think a woody is worth the added expense and aggravation that is.  If it were yours, do you have the skills to take this one from kindling to a finished project before the century is out?  Is there anyone left out there with the carpentry skills needed to make this beauty shine like new?  Please share your thoughts in the comments.