NAPCO Powr-Pak 4-Wheel Drive 1947 Vintage Men's T-Shirt

Northwest Auto Parts Company (NAPCO) was founded in 1918 as a specialized mechanical shop in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Like most manufacturers during WWII, NAPCO refocused their operation on producing vehicle drive assemblies for US military contractors, including those that went into the versatile 4WD general-purpose vehicles. Soldiers experienced the advantages of 4x4 trucks and wanted a 4x4 drivetrain in their trucks when they got home. NAPCO began offering an aftermarket 4x4 conversion kit called Powr-Pak in 1947 that could be bolted onto any truck chassis equipped with Hotchkiss drive. The transfer case was a Spicer unit with an optional Dual-Range Hi-Lo, but the rest of the kit consisted of readily available OEM parts right out of Detroit. The Big Three were caught off guard by the demand for 4WD trucks, and began offering the NAPCO Powr-Pak kit as an option through their dealers, creating a second wind for NAPCO. In 1960, Detroit began designing and manufacturing its own 4x4 systems which caused things to slow down, but NAPCO changed their focus to heavy-duty commercial vehicles like dump trucks and cement mixers. By 1965, NAPCO had sold all their patents to DANA, and the name once most commonly associated with 4WD had all but disappeared. 

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Like all our designs, this one is treated with our signature ‘relic-ing’ process which includes our own secret recipe of hand-painted chipping, cracking, fading, and just the right touch of yellowing to ensure that it looks the part of a true vintage imprint.** We lay these works of art down on premium Bella+Canvas 3001 Unisex Jersey Short Sleeve Tees, one of the softest, best-wearing t-shirts available today, via state of the art direct to garment (DTG) printing which allows us to create a vintage effect that simply can’t be accomplished with other printing methods. In short, these shirts are everything you’ve dreamed of and more – it feels soft and lightweight with just the right amount of stretch making it comfortable and flattering for both men and women.

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Not sure what size is your best fit? We recommend taking one of your current t-shirts, laying it flat and measuring it. The measurements in the chart below are taken with the shirt laying on a flat surface. To get the length, measure from the high shoulder point down to the bottom of the shirt. To get the width, measure approximately 1-inch below the armhole, across the chest, from seam to seam. While our tees are all made using premium, pre-shrunk, ring-spun cotton, there can be some shrinkage depending on your personal wash and dry cycles. With that said, if you're on the fence, we always suggest going up a size.

 

 

All sizes are provided in inches!

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*Heather colors are 52% combed and ring-spun cotton/48% polyester. Athletic and Black Heather is 90% combed and ring-spun cotton/10% polyester. Ash color is 99% Airlume combed and ring-spun cotton and 1% poly. **Due to the nature of the printing process and different sizes of shirts offered, imprint position and scale may vary slightly from the product images, but we do our best to be as accurate as possible.