For sale right now in Shippensburg, PA is a 1964 Jeep Wagoneer Panel Delivery. That’s right, it’s a beautiful Wagoneer suburban-family-hauler — with chrome Rhino grille, chrome headlight surrounds, and silver “pie pan” fake headlights — but turned into a utilitarian workhorse. The giant windows are gone — there’s just sheetmetal. The rear tailgate with crank-down (or optional power) rear glass — also gone, replaced by barn doors! It’s all the beauty of a Wagoneer with none of the frills. It’s just fantastic, and we need to take a look at a few examples to get our weekends started the proper way.
What prompted this little blog I’m now writing is this Facebook Marketplace listing I happened upon while doom-scrolling on my phone:
From the front, it just looks like a normal, early Jeep Wagoneer. 1964 was the second model-year; isn’t it wild to think that these same exact body panels lasted up to 1991?! I am currently daily-driving a Jeep J10, and when I tell people it’s from 1985, they can’t believe it; “looks much older,” they always respond. I’m glad this sheetmetal stuck around as long as it did, though, as it is beautiful.
Early Wagoneers were great. You could get them with independent front suspension (a first for Jeep!) for just a few months before Jeep nixed that option. The “Rhino” front grille is just legendary, and the interiors were totally simple — metal dash, bench seat, mechanically-actuated everything. OG Wagoneers were legends.
My personal favorite Wagoneers aren’t technically Wagoneers at all. They are two-door models, specifically panel vans, and even more specifically military variants (which I don’t think were even technically “Wagoneers”). If you’ve got a spare 11-ish minutes, you should watch Roadkill’s adventure in this incredible ex-military Jeep Panel Delivery truck:
Anyway, let’s pop back to this one for sale in Pennsylvania for just $1,700. The elephant in the room is those two rear windows:
After a bit of searching, it became clear that these are not factory windows. In fact, if I have this right, the only two rear windows ever put into a U.S.-market “SJ” SUV were these two (that’s my old 1986 Jeep Grand Wagoneer at the top and 1979 Jeep Cherokee Golden Eagle below):
So this vehicle clearly started off life as a panel delivery Jeep like these in this brochure:
You may be wondering why the owner cut two windows instead of just putting in one big one — perhaps one from a Cherokee or Grand Wagoneer (the two vehicles I showed before to show available factory rear widows). If you look at the Roadkill episode I embedded above, after the team tore out some insulation covering the rear side panels, you’ll see a body-color brace right in the center of the daylight opening. Presumably the person selling this vehicle in Pennsylvania wanted to avoid cutting that brace:
I’m not a huge fan of custom-hacked windows, but I will say: I love those rear barn doors:
Typically, Wagoneers and Grand Wagoneers have tailgate that look like this:
I love a good tailgate, but the barn doors are different, and I like different. Also, I hate having to roll down the damn rear window to get the tailgate open. It’s slow, and sometimes that power rear motor acts up, and I can no longer access my cargo.
Anyway, this Panel Delivery Jeep listing on Facebook Marketplace got me searching for more “Panel Delivery” Jeeps. I spotted this beautiful one (okay, the cowl-induction hood isn’t something I love) on cool-Jeep-for-sale-listing-website ewillys. Much of the interior has actually been swapped with parts from a “Super Wagoneer,” which was the name of the top-of-the-line Wagoneer offered around 1966 and 1967.
I also spotted this military Panel Delivery Jeep, formerly for sale near Fort Knox, Kentucky, courtesy of Barn Finds.
You’ll notice that, like the Panel Delivery Jeep in the Roadkill video, this military truck features extra fuel tank capacity in the cargo area:
I’m not entirely sure where I was going with this article, but I just wanted to point out the glory that is the Jeep Panel Delivery truck, because I fear that it doesn’t get enough love. Someone should buy that one in PA, even if it does have hack-job windows. I mean, $1,700! Plus, it comes with free rust!:
There’s some real shipwreck-grade oxidation in those pics. [Drool].
Images credit: Sellers
So can anyone help me locate this Jeep you have posted here in the article, It is down off Facebook. So I have an almost identical version of this vehicle. Mine is vin # 1413 10002 which would means more the likely 2nd off the assembly line. I would like to know the vin # on the one here In the article, as well as have other questions.
Thanks Jason
You live in California now, so wait until one of our 40 million residents decides to part with theirs. It’ll be way less rusty.
I moved from back east and used to browse rusty shitboxes after moving here. Once you work on some old thing and removing bolts doesn’t involve torches, cutters and rust conversion, you’ll stop buying cars from anyplace it snows.
Seriously. There’s one of what you want somewhere in this state and the entire thing will still be in one piece, without corrosion.
Take your time. Wait.
well, this is no Jeep panel, those are way too cool to drive in Cali unless maybe you are Steve Dulcich(he is like the Honey Badger of California drivers). But if the electric mom wagon you got gets to be too much to deal with you could go with the hated, so also cheap, HHR panel wagon car. SS version might get you a stick and supercharger even. carsandbids.com The Chevy HHR SS Panel
Well I can pick it up on my way to Detroit in Late April….wait a minute I dont think the new tenants in Troy will appreciate the rust bucket
I saw that ad too! Then I got to the rust and decided it wasn’t something I could save.
Maybe Im a bit crazy, but that front clip of the 1960’S white Jeep is WAY WAY WAY too similar to a 1960’s era Bentley
Just spotted this in my FB Marketplace feed right before coming here!
Odd how just a picture can remind you of something once common but long since forgotten. In the mid/late ’70’s these things weren’t exactly common but still very much around the Army in that same time frame. Neat!
“1964 was the second model-year; isn’t it wild to think that these same exact body panels lasted up to 1991?!”
That’s impressively close to the Renault 4 run, 1961-1992. Although to be fair, the of hinges for the doors and hatch changed a few times so parts aren’t 100% interchangeable… that is, of course, if you don’t know your way around a sawzall and a welder. My 1991 has a pre-1982 hatch and some beautiful amateur welds for the old hinges that were grafted to the car.
Very little gets my heart pumping as fast as a Rhino grille.
I wish I’d been close enough to be sure: I’d swear I saw a JL Wrangler with a Rhino grille on the interstate a few months ago.
I now know what the i# will be sold for. After all “Buy first, think later”. 🙂
I can’t believe it’s taken this long. The Willys Wagon had barn doors on the panel only too if I recall.
This is up there with the Hyrail version of the Willys Jeep Wagon. 4 door wagon… That turned into a Mitsubishi Diesel in Japan.
Frankly i like the windows more than the panels. The white panel ones look like ambulances.
I dunno about those doors out back, David. Balky though the motor may sometimes be, deleting the traditional tailgate means deleting the roll-down air conditioner!
You need a “Rust Never Sleeps” t-shirt, man.
Suburban swing out doors were very handy and I would imagine that swing out doors on a Cherokee would be just as nice and probably much less prone to rust and mechanical failure.
So…..this Jeep is “Rust Free”, just like most English vehicles (ie: they’re not charging for it! ;-0)
Panel trucks are cool and apparently this is where the two door Cherokee tooling came from.
At a guess the military ones were primarily for base use and the extra fuel capacity was to reduce refueling
The rust is why it’s so cheap. It can’t be registered in PA with those holes in the rockers.
This is really $1700 for the VIN that comes attached to this Jeep shaped pile of rust.
With how much values of Wagoneers have skyrocketed in recent years and how much the popularity of both Van Life and overlanding have grown at the same time… How is this not an extremely sought-after and valuable vehicle??? It scratches so many itches at once!
Someday a popular restomod company will build a really cool overlanding camper conversion of one of these, and then once the word is out, everybody will want one.
When I was a young man back east, these were called “parkway windows”. Roads identified as “parkways” – Garden State Parkway, Bronx River Parkway, etc, were strictly for passenger cars only, no trucks. But if you cut a couple windows into your Panel Delivery, Sedan Delivery, or cargo van, you could register those trucks as “station wagons” and drive them on parkways. I worked for a company that had a fleet of base model Chevy G-10 vans that all had additional windows installed so they could be driven on parkways.
It is adorable to read that people actually abided this rule, and that this was a clever workaround.
I regularly drive the Merritt/Wilbur Cross in CT and commercial vans and small trucks basically ignore this.
And box trucks are now pretty regular daily sights, and at least twice a month I see tractor trailers making the attempt on the Wilbur Cross thanks to mindless GPS usage on the part of truckers.
“ Plus, it comes with free rust!:”
David… that may be rust that comes with a free Jeep…
I knew someone with a dry cleaning business that delivered laundry in a 1930 Ford Model A Sedan Delivery which was great advertising. Panel deliverys were based on truck chassis while sedan deliverys were based on…sedans.
In the ’40s and ’50s I don’t think there was an American station wagon maker that didn’t offer a delivery version, even Crosley had a tiny one.
As late as the ’70s you could still buy a Pinto Cruising Wagon or a Vega Panel Express (great name, not-so-great car), but by then van and compact pickup offerings pretty much killed the market for delivery cars.
Beneath that new Hollywood veneer still beats the heart of the David Tracy we’ve come to know and love over the years. I think things are going to be okay, people.
I’ve never noticed the body lines on the side before. The ones that the Grand Wagoneer’s windows neatly fit into, and the Golden Eagle’s really don’t. With that in mind, the windows on this Panel Delivery aren’t bad at all in my opinion.