I was told that they only made 5600 M35A3's from A2's, and of that 5600 only 900 came with the setup that I have. So my big question; is there any documentation about how many A2 or A3's have survived and are in the hands of civilians,
Not really. Probably in the bowels of the Pentagon (or in the bowels of one of their servers) exists the info about how many M44 series trucks were surplussed, how many were written off for internal use (i.e. target practice), etc. But none of us will ever see this info.
or how many are still being used by the government?
Again, they know but we won't - but I can say this: Very, very few. Like, I'll bet across the continental US, there are less than a thousand. The huge M44 surplus party is several years gone at this point. Now, depending upon how you define "in use"-this figure may vary. "In use" as in it's original purpose of hauling stuff around? Nearly nil. On ranges as targets? Probably quite a few.
Can anyone deny or confirm these numbers?
Again, none of us can or will, but the info exists, it's just not ever going to be assembled and released.
Down at the range they constantly bring in older M35's to use as target practice, just curious how many are left in tact that are stateside and functioning as designed!
See above.
I would think that many years from now the price may be more driven by how unique and rare the MV, which may help with the justification to the wife why I need a matching 5 ton!
This is a phenomenally difficult thing to predict: What classic vehicle will be collectible. Like HendrsonJ said, it's impossible to predict: Witness the "relatively" low value of the G749 series Deuces (M135/M211). By all means, these vehicles should be pretty valuable- they're very well built (arguably better than the M44 series), they're automatics, they ride good, they're the first of the "modern" post-war M-series 6x6, etc. But their values are much lower than the later (and infinitely more common) M44 deuces. Probably more than anything else, people prefer the diesel engine and more "butch" looks of the M44 series.
I doubt anyone in 1970 thought Hemi 'Cuda's would be million dollar vehicles. Judging by their bargain base prices in the 1970's, it took a long time for anyone to realize or decide they were so special.
Guessing what will happen 20 years from now involves more than just what people might want. What if diesel is $20 a gallon? What if a set of good 20" tires are $5K?
True. But that's nowadays. I'm talking 10 or 20 years in the future, where there will be no new internal combustion vehicles (all electric, etc.) and most vehicles will be automated. These monsters will be a novelty, and probably toys for those with $$$ in their pockets. People will buy them for their simplicity, and the nostalgia of driving something "manually."
Although I am more likely to agree with your prediction here regarding electric and automated vehicles (see below response to another poster), I'll defer to my above statement about what becomes collectible is nearly impossible to predict.
Look at the cckw's they run 12k to 15k for pristine trucks. The big trucks like a deuce don't command as much as a jeep does because of the fact a jeep can be parked anywhere.
A deuce has a lot of haters blocking where you can and can't keep it. Not to mention the Era of the manual transmission is gone, people don't learn it anymore which means not many will be able to drive then is coming to an end.
This is a huge part of the MV hobby-and I think it's part of the reason Mules bring so much money. Everything beyond Jeep/Mule/M37 is enormous. Even a HMMWV is huge. Most people just dont' have the space.
The only reason CCKW's even bring this kind of money is the WWII aspect of them.
Johnny, I'd like to know why you say that. Internal combustion engines aren't going away for many decades. So-called alternative fuels (natural gas, peanut oil, etc.) will most likely replace normal gas and diesel within the next century, but Industry relies on engines. Pure electric vehicles are problematic, expensive, and challenging to deal with. Maybe a century from now, but at the moment they are here to stay.
You're probably right. But I'll put myself out there on a ledge and add this:
Right now, electric cars aren't as practical because of battery limits. You can bet that the instant that battery technology makes an enormous leaps and batteries will take you much further and charge more quickly, the shift from internal combustion to electrical will be so fast, it will make the internet revolution look quaint.
Passenger cars will be first. Then light trucks (<3500), then heavy trucks (<6500), then Class 6/8 stuff. Who knows when things like locomotives and ships will convert, probably 100 years or something, I agree. The technological gap is currently just enormous.
I want everybody to think about how fast and ubiquitous the internet came about: I remember the first time I "saw" the internet-I think it was like 1995ish and a co-worker "had the internet" and we went to see it and it was in it's infancy and seemed like CB radio for the 1990's. it was impossible (for me at least) to predict how fast it would change our lives. The change was so swift and now, after 20 years of internet access, we take things like googling the TM on our phone, downloading it and reading it while we're on the side of the road trying to fix something.
And autonomous vehicles are the same way. And the public (myself included) will flock to them the same way we flocked to the internet.
Because......................
I live in a reasonably rural area and so do many of you. I can pull out of my neighborhood and hit virtually no traffic and even the "big" city I live right outside of (Athens, Ga) has manageable traffic.
But a few times a month, I have to go to Atlanta. Yesterday, I had to go from my town to Marietta and be in Marietta at 9am.
It's a 65 mile trip that I've made in 50 minutes in the middle of the day.
https://goo.gl/maps/SgX757CktDp
But in the morning traffic it took me 2.5 hours. Just sitting in traffic- can't read, surf the internet, bored as ****. If I could have sat in my car and let it do the driving, I could have prepared for my meeting and on the way back, I could have started working on my proposal versus having to do it at home.
The amount of money being invested in these technologies are enormous. It's only a matter of time.
And the point of all that is:
We really don't know what the roadways will look like in the future. A conversion to automomous vehicles is so huge and expensive that it can't happen overnight, which means the technology has to co-exist within the framework of the current system. So it isn't lie they're gonna' outlaw anything. I suspect it'll be like dumbphones or VCR's-it'll just get to the point, long after anyone still wanted one, that you won't be able to get one. In 2015 we will allow 1940 Packards and Jeeps to go anywhere. So I don't think it's like at some point they're gonna' disallow older stuff like ours. I have zero concerns about that.
But my point is that if society wholeheartedly accepts electric and/or autonomous vehicles, there simply may not be enough people who want this stuff (vintage mv's or vintage cars in general) to make them raise in price.
At one point, the backbone of the antique car hobby was stuff like Ford Model T's and such. And they commanded high vehicles-and as the people who wanted them literally died of old age, their values dropped and they were replace with musclecars as the backbone of the car hobby. I keep waiting for their values to drop, but if it happens, it's gonna' require a lot more baby boomers exiting the hobby.......................
I also think in general, the US is sort of losing it's "love affair" with the automobile, for a ton of different reasons, and with that comes big changes to the car hobbies (which I consider the MV hobby to be a part of).
In short: Any kind of a guess, hope, anything about what becomes a collectible is simply too difficult to predict. When gas was $4 a gallon 10 years ago, did any of you expect it to be less than $2 10 years later?
, it could take decades and cost hundreds of million of dollars and thousands of lives.