1961 Vermillion V100 I6
1961 Vermillion V100 V8 Heavy Duty
1961 Vermillion V100 V8
The 60’s were a period of relatively large growth of Vermillion. The decade kicked of with the forming of Vermillion Commercial, which, well, was the commercial vehicle division of Vermillion Motor Company. Their first product was the V100, a pickup truck meant to take a market share from Deer and Hunt, and other irrelevant (
) companies.
The truck was sold in three variants,
The I6, sold with the venerable Vermillion Straight Six, which was slowly being phased out in passenger car applications (in favor of the new Rocket-Glide I6 series of engines), but would continue to be used in commercial vehicles, since it was a proved design. This revision developed 127 hp out of a 259 CI displacement. Unlike the other trims, the I6 trim was not available with a four wheel drive, albeit a locking differential was an option.
The V8 variant was the offroad variant, with some amenities to make it more bearable, such as a decent quality radio, and a practical bench seat of decent comfort, capable of holding three people. The four wheel drive was the standard, along with lockable diffs. It’s powered by another 276 CI variant of the RT V8. This time, instead of being tuned for sport, like it was in the Vendetta, it’s tuned for utility, with power being available in fairly low RPMs. It does make less power (105.9 hp) because of that, but what can you do?
The V8 Heavy Duty variant does not differ much, except it was geared towards businesses doing heavy work. Available with RWD and 4x4, depending on the user’s needs, it came with a three speed Tri-matic auto transmission, had suspension stiffened to sacrifice comfort for load capacity, and radio removed, to sacrifice comfort for a lower price. (You could get it as an option though.)