International Harvester Travelette

1961-1962 IHC C-120 Travelette

1958 A-120 Travelette 4x4 (showing three-door cab)

1966 Travelette in its original design

International introduced the Travelette for 1957 production. Based on the newly introduced A-Series pickup truck,[4] the Travelette added a rear seat to the cab by using the body structure of the Travelall wagon (analogous to the full-size SUVs of today), including its second passenger-side door.[5] To allow for a full-size pickup truck bed, the wheelbase of the Travelette was extended to 126 inches (3.2 m).[6] As with the standard International pickup truck and the Travelall wagon, the Travelette was offered with both rear-wheel drive and 4-wheel drive.[7]

Alongside the Travelall wagon, the Travelette crew cab followed the development of International light-duty pickup trucks, with International introducing the lightly updated B-Series pickups for 1959.

For 1961, International introduced the redesigned C-series pickups. While the cab shared its structure with the A/B series, in a major design change, a driver-side rear door was added, giving the Travelette four sedan-style doors.[8][9] While marketed under the Travelette name, the official model designation would change multiple times through the mid-1960s.

For 1969, the Travelette underwent a redesign, as International introduced its Light Line pickups. Offered in 149-inch (3.8 m) and 164-inch (4.2 m) wheelbases (dependent on pickup bed length),[10] the Light Line Travelette received an all-new cab design (the first complete redesign of the cab since 1957). For 1974, the four-wheel drive configuration was discontinued and the front suspension was redesigned.[1]

C-120 Travelette

Through its production, the International Travelette had extremely high customer satisfaction. Marketed primarily as a work vehicle, the model line struggled to compete against the more widely available pickup trucks from Dodge, Ford, and General Motors. Following the 1973 fuel crisis, sales of International light-duty vehicles collapsed, as the Light Line (pickup, Travelall, Travelette) trucks were far heavier and less fuel-efficient than other American-produced vehicles.

Following the 1975 model year, all three Light Line trucks were discontinued, with International concentrating its light-duty resources on the Scout off-road vehicle.

1967 Travelette 1200B 4x4

Effectively a hybrid of IH's light-duty pickup truck and Travelall wagon/SUV when it entered production, the Travelette was the first factory-produced pickup truck with two rows of seating.[9] For 1961, the Travelette would become the first pickup truck with four forward-opening doors. The four-door design was adopted by competing manufacturers, with Dodge and Ford introducing crew-cabs in 1963 and 1965, respectively.[11] General Motors followed suit in 1973, also using its full-sized SUV as a basis for its crew cab. During the late 1970s, Japanese manufacturers introduced crew-cab pickups of their own, adopting shortened pickup truck beds; while popular in markets around the world, four-door compact pickup trucks would not be introduced to North America until the late 1990s.

The 1957–1960 three-door Travelette would influence pickup truck design during the 1970s, as American pickup trucks adopted two-door extended-cab pickup trucks. In contrast to work-oriented crew cabs, extended cabs were marketed for both work and personal use; as in a two-door vehicle, the rear seat was accessed by folding the front seats. International never introduced its extended-cab pickup truck, but Dodge and Ford introduced the Club Cab and Super Cab in 1973 and 1974, respectively (GM would do so in 1988). In the late 1990s, rear passenger doors made their returns on extended-cab pickups; initially introduced as rear-hinged doors, front-hinged doors were introduced during the 2010s (effectively creating a shorter-length crew cab).

After the 1980 discontinuation of the Scout II Terra, International exited light-duty pickup production entirely to focus on medium and heavy-duty trucks. From 2004 to 2008, International Harvester's successor company Navistar produced the XT series pickup trucks. (By far) the largest pickup truck ever sold for commercial sale in the United States, the CXT and RXT was derived from the medium-duty 7000 and 4000 series (today the HV and MV) and were sold nearly exclusively in a crew-cab configuration.

• List of International Harvester vehicles
• International Harvester Travelall
• International Light Line pickup

Wikimedia Commons has media related to International Travelette.

• McCormick-International Harvester Collection (Travelette)