Sweptline or Utiline decision

[Seanreisk]

I have recently started restoration of a '68 W100 Power Wagon. The 318 runs fine but the entire drivetrain is well-aged. Body and frame are almost 100% rust free, but some body panels have been through the thicker parts of the great outdoors, if you know what I mean.

The doors close perfectly (showroom perfectly), so that's why I bought it. Priorities.

It's a short bed Utiline, which I like. The bed fenders were more work than I wanted to hammer out, but in February I found two fenders from a '74 that were in great shape, so I bought them. A few weeks later I found a driver's side fender that has the spare wheel cutout, and although it needs a few patches they are patches that I can do. So I bought that too, and the tire mounting brace. All good so far.

Then yesterday I was in the parking lot of a local grocery store, and a guy in a Chevy Suburban drives into the lot pulling the back of a short bed Sweptline that has been converted into a trailer. I didn't think about it at first, but when I came out of the store it was still there, and so I walked around it, and looked at it, and measured it and discreetly tapped it, and it was a solid (really solid) Sweptline bed, short bed with no rust or dents except the tailgate, which is bent and thrashed (looks like someone backed into a stump while the tailgate was down.) The metal in the floor of the bed is good, it has a few dings but no warping. Even the chrome bezels around the tail lights are dent free (it was missing the '65-style chrome side trim, though.)

Guy comes out, I talk to him, he says it's not much of a trailer (too small to haul much firewood), I ask him what he'd want for it, he says, "$300.00" .... and I bought it. Honestly, when he said $300.00 I almost offered to marry his ugliest daughter, you could hear the vacuum that formed in my pocket from the extreme speed that I pulled my checkbook out.

So now I have a problem. I like the Utiline. But I think the short-bed Sweptlines are kinda sexy, too, and this bed is nice. And it's already off the truck, so I can just loosen the bolts, tow it to the sandblaster and have them strip the paint off.

I seriously can't decide. I know I'll eventually fix up both beds, if just for trade bait. But which do you like better? And not to be mercenary, but which do you think would be worth more? I know that if I were dropping this truck the Sweptline would be the way to go, but it's a PowerWagon and I want those big letters along the hood to stay at chest height.

[PwrWgnDrvr]

Wide bed is way showier and more useful as it holds more. Ute beds harken back to the 50's and beyond. You will need to extend the frame about 2 1/4" for the wide bed so keep the trailer frame.

[sledgehammer]

I like the wide beds better. I’m changing mine over from a Ute to a wide bed. Hard to say what would be worth more, everybody likes something different. Sounds like you got a hell of a deal on the bed though.