MB227209 French Panels

As mentioned elsewhere, I purchased an MB in 1967 when I was starting high school. In 1971 when I was at college, my Dad traded it off on a lawn tractor. In about 1988 I embarked on reliving my youth by purchasing MB 227209 from Louie Larson. I decided to rebuild the body from cowl back. I purchased a set of body panels from Beachwood. I am fairly certain they were all surplus spares from French Hotchkiss M201 production. As I understand it, as part of the Willys licensing deal, Willys supplied some of the original tooling used during MB production. I have also seen at STIC in Sancerre France a big stack of Willys blueprints being used for body parts production, and a pattern room full of original Willys panels. On the panels I used the corner handle holes on the right rear quarter panel were about an inch too low, a modification the French did to allow room for a corner mounted radio antenna support. I also know that I saw some of these same panels a year or so later at Atlantic Automotive (Roy Harris) in Kent, UK, and that they were all in the same dark green color. Later production replacement panels made by STIC in France for the French Army, using, I believe, this same original Willys (via Hotchkiss) tooling, were typically painted with modern primer colors, not that shade of dark green. (see: https://thomas.tcjnet.com/sancerre/)

The panels I got from Beachwood were spot on, and fit together without any modification. However, from a restoration standpoint I made a number of mistakes. The front floor I used was late MB, having the composite stye hat channels, MB227209 originally had the early Willys ACM1 style hat channels. I remember that Merrill Madsen (co-author of AAW) scolded me about it, and said I should have ground off those and replaced with the early style….  I also think that floor used later style spot welded captive nut cages at the transmission opening (and elsewhere that should have not had captive nuts), rather than the original style that were inserted into a square hole, and swaged down from the other side. Not to mention other small details, such as too many spot welded haraness clips, or certain cut and weld shaping of the front floor.

Here are some pictures taken then (click to expand):

MB227209, as found:

 

Panels, on arrival from Beachwood:

Fixing up the cowl:

 

Rough fitting the panels:

Factory paint removed, ready for spotwelding:

Assembled, after final sanding and welding, then wash with metal prep prior to painting (flash rust is normal).

Painted, waiting to mate with frame etc.:

First drive, about 1989. (many things not exactly correct, like the data plates) :