Found: the only streamlined Seagram’s Diamond T

As Rollan Jerry wrote in the recent SIA Flashback article on coachbuilt trucks, many such vehicles were built in Canada for beer brewers because Canadian laws at the time banned them from advertising their products in print. Apparently that ban extended to spirits distillers as well, as evidenced by this recently found 1938 Diamond T, a one-off design built for Seagram’s, the famed Canadian distillers.

Yes, it looks rather horrible. According to its known history, after Seagram’s commissioned Toronto-based Smith Brothers Body Works to build the steel-bodied truck in 1938, Seagram’s used it as a delivery van and mobile billboard until 1949, then sold the truck to Holman Construction in Rockwood, Ontario, which simply painted over the door signs, then hauled building materials with it, possibly until the early 1980s, when Holman sold it to a scrap dealer. How it escaped the crusher remains unknown, but it now sits at Ron Fawcett Motors, a well-established restoration shop, in Whitby, Ontario.

I spoke with Art Carty at Fawcett, and he said the company would like to find a buyer who can fund the truck’s restoration rather than restore it themselves, though it looks to be all there, save for the wood structure underneath the steel skin. Seagram’s is in no position to buy the truck back – the company closed its museum in 1997 and has since been sold off to other beverage companies.

We searched American Beer Trucks and the two recent SIA articles on streamlined and purpose-built trucks, but saw no additional photos on the Seagram’s Diamond T, and only have the one directly above provided by the folks at Fawcett. Smith Brothers, however, did build the most famous of the Canadian streamlined beer trucks – the Labatt’s White truck and trailer, so we have to wonder whether Count Alexis de Sakhnoffsky had a hand in designing the Seagram’s Diamond T as well.