J. Vissers

Interesting. I guess seatbelts probably weren't very common either. If you haven't guessed, I'm still on the young side of the spectrum. Were those early bumpers actually very functional, or were they more flashy, like a spoiler on an Alero?

The Maxwell does look really, really close! Please forgive my ignorance, but why are there no bumpers on the photos you're sharing?

Thanks, everyone. We'd like to get more precise, if possible, but this is a starting point at least. How close to 9 inches do they typically run? If we end up using that number, we'll want to keep track of how accurate it is (or isn't). The less accurate our numbers, the larger area we'll be searching.

We've also considered the idea that the vehicle may not be very new, and may have alternative replacement parts from other vehicles on it. Just to complicate things a little more...

The short story is, we're trying to determine the make and model of the vehicle in the attached photo so we can determine the size of some of the parts, like the headlight and the bumper. The long story is partially contained in this link: https://www.mininggazette.com/news/2020/08/search-remains-ongoing-for-long-lost-stone-airplane/ But since there's a sometimes-functioning paywall I'll try to resummarize. The photo was taken somewhere on the Keweenaw Peninsula of Michigan during the copper mining era. As you can see, there's an airplane behind the gentlemen in the photo, which has a real prop but is otherwise made of stone masonry and what looks like steel rails. Ultimately, we're trying to locate the remains of that stone airplane. We believe it was a CWA project, because there are three stone boats of similar construction that were, but no records can be found to confirm that and provide location information. Instead, we're trying to judge the distance to the shafthouse in the background on the left of the photo. Using that, we can calculate a radius from a few of the shafthouse locations, see where they intersected old roads, and narrow our search to a handful of easily-searchable areas. I've enlisted the help of a professor from Michigan Technological University to help me with the math. But we need the dimensions of some things that are in the photograph. The car parts are a standard size (we hope), so if we can identify exactly what they are, we figure we should be able to come up with measurements. Our best guess at the moment is that it's a mid-1920's Dodge truck or sedan, but we lack expertise with classic vehicles. And that has brought me here. Can you help us out?