Look At This Amazing Little Minivan That Shares A Name With Some Instagram Dogs

I’v always been mildly obsessed with cars that seem to have “human” names, which I know is a pretty vast category, but still. I guess I mostly mean car names that sound familiar to me, Western-type names, though I’m open to learning about cars that have human-like non-Western names, of course. Anyway, let’s look at one today, a fascinating strange little minivan-like vehicle, the Lloyd LT600, also known as the Lloyd Theodor.

“Lloyd Theodor” or, to de-Germanify it a bit, “Lloyd Theodore” does definitely sound like a human name, though in this case the example I’m choosing isn’t human at all, just human-friendly, because they’re canines. There are humans named Lloyd Theodore out there, but all the references I found were obituaries and that seemed a grim way to start a day, but happily I stumbled upon a spaniel named Lloyd Theodore.

For whatever reason, though, Lloyd’s posts aren’t embeddable, so, sorry, Lloyd, you’ll get mentioned but I’m only able to embed your dog-colleague with the same-but-reversed name, Theodore Lloyd, a noted Mastiff, here:

 

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A post shared by Theodore Lloyd (@iamteddythemastiff)

Lloyd cars, as you can imagine, lend themselves pretty well to sharing human names. I’ve mentioned before how the Lloyd Alexander shares a name with a famous children’s author who wrote The Black Cauldron. I even made a chart back when I was at the Old Site, though because of the weird way they do stuff is hard to find online, so here, I’ll just show you again:

Good times! Anyway, let’s get back to this other Lloyd, the Lloyd LT 600 “Theodor,” because I really like these funny things:

There was once a German saying that translated to “He who doesn’t fear death drives a Lloyd” mostly because Lloyds were known for their plywood-and-fake-leather body construction during times of steel shortages, making for cars that were about as good in a crash as a well-starched suit, but more splintery.

The LT 600 actually started out as the LT 500 in 1952 and still employed a bit of timber framing and plywood in its construction, but by the time it was upgraded to the LT 600 in 1955 (with its 596 cc engine!) these had switched to all-steel construction, so maybe that old saying wasn’t quite so relevant anymore

The LT 600 was a sort of commercial vehicle, not unlike a downmarket and smaller Volkswagen Type 2 Transporter, able to handle either cargo or passenger-hauling duties.

The design was essentially a box on wheels, which makes sense, and unlike the famous VW bus, the Lloyd had a transverse front-mounted inline-twin two-stroke engine driving the front wheels, which did leave everything from the front axle rearward nice and open for people or cargo.

The little two-banger made about 19 horsepower, but the whole thing didn’t weigh all that much, so these probably didn’t feel all that slow, though they topped out just under 50 mph.

One kind of odd thing about the LT600 was that it only had front doors and a door at the rear; there were no cargo-area or passenger-area side doors, which must have made getting in and out of the thing for the people in the middle and rear rows kind of difficult.

The front passenger seat folded forward, which probably helped a bit, but with that bench seat in the rear, I’m not really sure if there was an elegant way to enter from the rear?

I guess there was another ingress/egress option, the big optional sunroof:

I think it’s interesting the brochure copy here notes that the sunroof is good for “still and motion picture enthusiasts” which I guess means you can stand up out of it and take pictures? Or see a drive-in movie better through the sunroof? I’m not really sure.

Surprisingly, a number of these made it to America; I know the Lane Motor Museum has one, and it seems RM Auctions sold one that the airline Pan Am used to use to ferry crew from airplanes to hotels, and you have to admit, especially in its dapper Pan Am livery, it’s pretty adorable.

I like its funny pug dog ugly-cute face and eager loaf-of-bread proportions. Those rear wheels do show some exciting camber when unloaded, but likely would end up nice and vertical when this was full of people or stuff.

These Lloyds are sort of in the category of the original Fiat Multipla and are perhaps carried on in more modern cars with “tall boy”-style Kei cars like the Daihatsu Wake, tiny cars designed to hold far more people or stuff than would seem possible.

It’s a fun category of vehicle, whether named for dogs or people or not.