As you likely already know, there’s finally a new US Postal Service delivery vehicle being developed, a vehicle that will replace the venerable and now very long-in-every-tooth Grumman Long Life Vehicle (LLV), which has been in use since 1986, definitely living up to its name. The LLV is being replaced, to the delight of many overheated mail carriers, by the Next Generation Delivery Vehicle (NGDV), developed by primarily military-vehicle maker Oshkosh. We’ve known the NGDV is coming for some time; what we didn’t know is that Oshkosh seems to be planning a roadster based on the NGDV design, which is shocking until you realize that there seems to have been a plan by Grumman to develop an LLV-based sports roadster back in the day as well. The Autopian has gained this information from an anonymous source that has taken photographs of what appears to be the laptop of an Oshkosh employee.
We received these images on a flash drive mailed to our PO box; no information about the photographer was given. A typewritten note accompanying the USB drive noted that the pictures were taken at a coffee shop in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, not far from Oshkosh Defense’s main offices. The photographer was another customer who saw what he presumed the Oshkosh employee was working on; when the employee left to go to the bathroom, the photographer took four photos of the laptop’s screen, flipping through a series of four slides showing the NGDV-based roadster.
This may be illegal; our automated lawyer program that runs on one of my Apple IIs still seems to be processing the situation and keeps accessing the disk drive a lot, so we don’t really know at this point. In the interest of serving our readers the best we can, we have decided to run the photographs. The photographer’s immobile hand appears in all photos, but despite bringing in trained knuckle-identification experts, we still do not know the source of these images.
Before looking at these new NGDV images, let’s look back at the old LLV-based roadster, of which one prototype was built, it is believed:
Grumman was unable to raise the capital needed to produce and sell the LLV-R Roadster, and only one prototype is known to have been built, using the same Chevrolet S-10 chassis as the production LLV. The current whereabouts of the prototype is unknown, but Postal Service lore suggests that then Postmaster General Preston R. Tisch drove it into the swimming pool by the main lodge at Camp David on a triple-dog-dare issued by then-Attorney General Edwin Meese during Ronald Reagan’s 1988 Camp David Retreat, destroying it.
The dream of a Postal Truck-derived roadster is clearly still very much alive, as these slides show. Here’s the first image of the laptop with an overview slide of the NGDV Roadster:
As you can see, there’s a mockup of the roadster and a few bullet points, including one that notes the Postal Service contract was a “Trojan Horse” to get the roadster built. The other bullet points note that re-use of body panels and glass from the delivery vehicle was considered a priority, and that the convertible tops were sourced from new-old-stock Packard convertible tops, which were purchased at an un-named estate sale. The slide also notes Oshkosh expects the NGDV Roadster to be the best-selling sports car in America by 2027, and that it will come standard with a four-speed manual, with optional overdrive.
Another slide shows the distinctive profile of the NGDV Roadster:
The top looks quite bulky and clunky, which makes sense, considering it’s sourced from a 1920s Packard. The next slide shows the top in the up position:
It’s not clear if any sort of side curtains or other weather protection will be offered; the huge size of Packard folding roofs make them ideal for the massive, tall windshield re-used from the delivery vehicle version, but they are somewhat ungainly-seeming by modern standards. It also appears that there are a full three rows of seats in the roadster, making it highly unusual for a class of cars that normally seat only two people.
Interestingly, it seems that other options were considered; the last photograph shows a slide featuring a much sleeker NGDV Roadster design:
This does look a lot better, I think, with an entirely new windshield, a re-located seating position, a much tidier convertible top, and a longer rear decklid. Unfortunately, this version was rejected because it would have required the development (and presumably, tooling) to produce all those new body panels and glass.
This is truly a fascinating insight into a variant of a vehicle we will all be seeing all over the place in the near future. Can Oshkosh really leverage its new NGDV platform to build the tall-windshield, three-row roadster that the public is clearly craving? Or will they suffer the same fate as Grumman when they had a similar dream all those years ago?
Personally, I hope they can pull it off. Our crack team of authenticity evaluators have assured me that the likelihood that these images are, in fact, genuine is notable, though they do concede that there is a slight chance this is all fabricated and someone is playing a cruel joke on us, but they estimate the odds of that being the case at no more than a mere 97.665%.
I like those odds! And, even more, I like the idea of driving around in a four-speed open-topped, massive-windshield’d roadster with six or so of my best pals sometime around 2027. You can do this, Oshkosh!
Call it the “Zip”
Is this April 1st? Those photos are all clearly fake. Every image is framed exactly the same. The fingers on the keyboard are always the same.
March 32nd
I like how the drivers seat on the low windowed one is just in front of the rear wheel. Its like driving from the rear of the vehicle like an old clipper ship
I’d daily. Hopefully it comes with a hardtop that’s just {rest_of_the_mail_truck.psd}