Junkyard Find: 1962 International Harvester C-120 Travelette

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin
junkyard find 1962 international harvester c 120 travelette

There was once a time when you could buy street vehicles made by a farm equipment manufacturer, and IHC products still show up in self-service wrecking yards today. In this series so far, we’ve seen this ’70 Scout, this ’71 Travelall, this ’71 Scout, this ’72 1010 pickup, this ’73 Scout, and this ’74 Scout. The crew-cab Travelette is a machine you won’t see every day, so I shot this ’62 that I spotted in a Northern California wrecking yard.

Being a California truck, there’s minimal rust here, but 52 years of hard work have worn everything out.

Here’s a good old Black Diamond 240-cubic-inch straight-six, rated at 141 horses in 1962. Yes, that’s not much more power than a 2014 Corolla gets; pickup drivers were tougher back when instant annihilation threatened.

Two huge bench seats, and a custom shag-carpet headliner.

I’m a little puzzled by this bumper extension. Is this to protect the open tailgate when hauling extra-long loads?










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  • Matador Matador on Apr 10, 2014

    Seems odd that International pickups never caught on. Farmers out here buy a lot of trucks, so why not an IH?

    • See 5 previous
    • Drzhivago138 Drzhivago138 on Apr 11, 2014

      @Scoutdude Yep--and that worked about as well as any V8 ever has in a farm implement...

  • Jeff S Jeff S on Apr 12, 2014

    @highdesert cat--My granddad's 63 IH 1000 series step side had the same body style but it had single headlights. I am sure it had this same 6 cylinder engine with a manual choke.

  • ToolGuy • Nice vehicle, reasonable price, good writeup. I like your ALL CAPS. 🙂"my mid-trim EX tester is saddled with dummy buttons for a function that’s not there"• If you press the Dummy button, does a narcissist show up spouting grandiose comments? Lol.
  • MaintenanceCosts These are everywhere around here. I'm not sure the extra power over a CR-V hybrid is worth the fragile interior materials and the Kia dealership experience.
  • MaintenanceCosts It's such a shame about the unusable ergonomics. I kind of like the looks of this Camaro and by all accounts it's the best-driving of the current generation of ponycars. A manual 2SS would be a really fun toy if only I could see out of it enough to drive safely.
  • ToolGuy Gut feel: It won't sell all that well as a new vehicle, but will be wildly popular in the used market 12.5 years from now.(See FJ Cruiser)
  • MKizzy I can't round a corner without seeing at least one new Sportage so good for Kia even with its insectoid face. Perhaps Kia's music/HVAC swap system would work better if each set of controls had its own easily discernible color scheme.
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