Ford Model 51

The Ford Model V8-51, sold around the world as the Ford 51, was a Ford lorry built from 1935 into the 1940s. It was developed in the United States in 1935 from the Ford V8 passenger car as the successor of the Model BB, and it carried a water-cooled 3.6 litre V8 petrol engine rated at 90 PS, enough for a top speed of 83 km/h at an average consumption of about 26 litres per 100 km. Ford of Britain sold the same lorry as the Fordson 61 and 62. From 1937 to 1939 the German Ford company, later Ford-Werke AG, also built it at Cologne-Niehl, as a short wheelbase and a long wheelbase version, the long one with a payload of three tonnes, with a flatbed or a box body and for the army with an open cab. The German lorries had a one-piece windscreen and a modified cab, served the NSKK and the Wehrmacht in large numbers, and gave way to the standardised three tonne military lorry once war production began; some surviving civilian lorries were converted to wood gas.