One Trick Vet.(evaluation of Studebaker M-29)(Product/service evaluation)

Byline: BOB TOMAINE

The ability to self-destruct has never been a very popular option.

Bob Rubino says his 1944 Studebaker M-29 has space over the bellhousing to hold eight pounds of TNT and will accept a detonator and wiring to explode it. "If it blew up,'' he says, "it would break the hull in half, and take out the engine, transmission and bellhousing.'' Nothing important would be left to cannibalize.

If that and the 1944 model year don't say "military,'' the M-29's design does. About the size of a contemporary jeep, the "Weasel'' is a tracked soft-top cargo carrier, resembling a small bulldozer with a sheetmetal body and canvas roof.

Early Weasels were rear-engined two-seaters and never saw the commando raids for which they were intended. Instead they evolved into the front-engined M-29, which places a driver in front and three passengers tightly in the rear, and can carry stretchers and a quarter ton of cargo.

Jim Gilmore, who works for Rubino's Mil Spec Vehicle Restorations in Belvidere, New Jersey, says the Weasel "worked really well, not just in snow, but in mud and pretty much everywhere because of its low pressure, which is less than a man's footprint.''

Rubino found his Weasel at a roadside store in 1989, running but needing restoration. It was one of several at Red Ball Military Transport's meet in Gilbert, Pennsylvania, last September.