The cherry trees put on a spectacular show this year, making this old GMC van seem even battleship greyer than it is. Looks innocent enough, doesn’t it? It’s got some stories, though, I’m sure.
For much of April it rained cherry petals as the various species did their thing, one after another. This van is no curb monument; I see it in use often enough—it seems to run well—to have noticed its side marker lights are miswired.
Cragar S/S mags in appropriate condition to suit this van; finned brake drum, and an airplane-style pair of chocks. H’mm…something something parking broke something? Good ol’ BFGoodrich Radial T/As; let us hope they never go out of production.
It’s a boxy box on wheels, similar to the contemporary Fargo-Dodge A-100/A-108 and Mercury-Ford Econoline.
Not babied, but not abused, as it seems.
Hey, wow, those giant whip CB antennas, so long they had to be spring-mounted; arched forward, and lashed down with a clip to avoid unwanted friction at the entrance to a parkade or garage. Laurie’s ’71 Wagoneer had one.
It shouldn’t be possible for a sealed-beam headlamp to be cockeyed; in theory they only fit with the correct clocking. But old parts just sometimes don’t work together as intended; ask my spine. Maybe the chrome visors interfere? Eh. At least they’re not the unsafe eyelid type.
Oh, now here we go; there’s a pretty fair amount goin’ on here. The dashboard is covered in some kinda of phur—I don’t reckon the defogger works much, but there’s a later high-back bucket seat with one of those massage-ball drapes on it, and a club lock on the steering wheel: it gets driven at length, and the owner wants to keep it.
Good job there’s a guard dog on duty.
I’m not sure what the latter has to do with the former. Maybe this is a workaround for those I May Be Slow…But I’m In Front Of You decals being legal only for use on a VW Bus.
Great find and photos Daniel. The long wheelbase greatly improves the overall balance, with the visual heaviness of too much front overhang still there. Same for the A100. The wider tires help give it more presence, and grip. Growing up in the late 70s, I never warmed up to any domestic vans of the 60s. They all seemed too spartan, designed exclusively for a commercial market. Some may like their basic, utilitarian nature. I find them cold. The nose styling often appearing like they spent 20 minutes on it. Function over form, of course. The colour modernizes its look. The paint could use some wet sanding to even the gloss and remove the orange peel some. Great job on these pics!
I think you’re right; the A108 looks less…tippy?…than the A100. As to the overall styling, well, I have my own biases; I think the Dodge/Fargo is the best of the bunch, with those great big pie pan headlight bezels.
I wish you weren’t right about grey paint modernising the look. I reckon a van like this wants to be bright turquoise; cobalt blue; mustard yellow; maroon, or at least phone company green. Still, the grey works, in its own way. Makes the cherry blossoms look pinker, too!
It would have been nice if the custom van market happened much earlier, as some of these smaller and practical early designs could have benefited from more attention to style and comfort.
I prepared and posted a Photoshop here several years ago, with Chrysler turbine car bezels added to a Fargo/Dodge van. With the paint also enhanced. Along with a Dodge crosshair treatment on the grille. For me, the ’71 Dodge Tradesman was the first domestic van I genuinely thought had some style, to partially match its practical purposes.
This is a nice photochop effort! I like the grillework you’ve done here, and the paint is a non-negotiable yes. The turbine car bezels are hella nifty in their own right, and that’s a damn fine transplant job you’ve done, but they’re not quite working for me here; they’re looking too much like overdone eyelashes. Concentric alternating chrome/black/chrome/black rings might work better for me. The windshield, too—I appreciate your desire to get rid of the central divider and flat panes, but the single flat pane bothers me quite a bit more than the dual flat panes. I think something like the curved windshield on today’s GMC might be better, or…like…a windshield borrowed from a ’63-’66 Dart-Valiant.
Thanks Daniel, I agree with your critique. It was mostly an exercise in different design elements. I wasn’t a huge fan of the cosmic-inspired pie pan bezels. I liked the ‘floating’ effect of the Turbine Car’s units.
I quite liked your designs for the Gremlin and Sportabout. Your concept, if adopted from the beginning, undoubtedly would have garnered more sales and better reviews for the Gremlin. And would have been a fresher approach, with a much airier greenhouse. Would have made the Pacer less impactful. As it would have made the Gremlin appear much more modern.
But if the Pacer’d made less of a splash, where would that’ve left Wayne and Garth? I shudder to think.
…and now I know exactly what kind of windshield I want to see on that van. This kind, scaled appropriately.
I do seriously dig the Turbine Car nacelles. That was really a knockout design, that whole car and its every detail. Triple-concentrated optimism of every kind, rendered in metal and glass and technology.
Thanks for the compliments on my noodlery with the AMC cars! Looking at them anew, I see similarity in the rooflines of the Gremlin and the Jeepster. H’mmmm.
Van day in Vancouver.
Great story !!
Way back a few yrs ago (late ’70’s), my friend John wanted to help a guy rework a van just like this one, but it was black/grey. Wanted to sand blast it & reshoot in dark blue. While on the way to pick up 12 bags of sand, the van’s steering was sloppy as hell. Stopped & checked it out, found the Keystone multi fit wheels, which had adapter plates on for different bolt patterns, were loose. After tightening them up, got the sand & got started on the first body, my Willys (another story), when we got to the van, started the LF fender, then discovered why sand blasting was no longer used….the fender has started to bend & warp due to the peening action on the thin sheet metal. The Jeep body was 3X the thickness, so it was OK. Primed the fender & let it go. Good times !!
My limited media-blasting experience involves castings and heavy steel parts, but I have heard of this heat-warp effect you describe. “Prime it and let it go” sounds like it was the right way forward.
I see wheel chocks on some vintage cars now and then, invariably with a manual transmission. I suspect that the parking brakes with those crappy pull handles are not confidence inspiring. The ones on my ’66 F100 very much fall under that category. I carry a chunk of 2×4 in the bed for that reason: on a steep hill, even in gear with the brake pulled, it will start to move in little increments, as the engine gets turned past another compression stroke. It makes a funny little grunting noise as it’s doing that.
Of course this van is parked on a level street, so it’s overkill.
I never liked those T-handle parking brakes on my ’63-’73 Darts and Valiants. Not enough leverage to apply the brake firmly.
Presuming that a rusty parking brake cable didn’t snap on this van some time in the early 80s.
I put a chock behind each car in my driveway just for an extra measure of safety for the four there. The Dodge does need it since if I apply the parking brake firmly the left passenger side one tends not to release when it should. Need to look into that one day.
As to JP’s comment both the Mustang and Cougar has more like an L handle and they always cracked at the metal stem after some time. I know I replaced a few in my Cougar. Now I simply use two hands to pull it out with one of the metal stem. I also have four NOS ones in stock just in case. I did see two Mustangs, 67 and 68, two weeks ago at a Friday cars and coffee in Danville. Looking in I saw both had broken handles.
“…noticed its side marker lights are miswired.” Ok, I suspect I know, but tell me why.
What I saw was the front and rear side markers flashing in sync with the front and rear turn signals while the van’s parking lights were on. That almost certainly means the front side markers are wired across their local turn signal feed and ground. I haven’t happened to see the van with the brakes applied, but if the rear side markers are wired across their local turn signal and ground, too, then they’ll light up whenever the driver steps on the brake, because this van has combination stop+turn lights. Or perhaps the rear side markers are also extension-wired across front turn feed and ground. Any of the foregoing would mean the side markers never actually do their job of, um, side marking; they’d never light up steadily with the park/tail/headlamps lit.
Original wiring (“proper”, if you like) is for the rear side markers to be wired across tail light feed and ground, and the front side markers to be wired across parking light feed and turn signal feed—this causes them to light steadily with the parking lamps on; to flash in phase with the front and rear turn signals if the parking lamps are off, and to flash in opposite-phase with the front and rear turn signals if the parking lamps are on. That’s made possible by the large resistance difference between the 4w side marker filament and the 27w turn signal filament; I’ve got a page describing the magic trick.
It is possible to have the side markers flash in sync with the front and rear turn signals even when the parking lamps are lit, but it requires a logic module as described at the linked page. There’s a remote possibility such a module has been installed in this van, but I think I’d remember having sold him one. 🤓
(What was your guess?)
My favourite time of the year in Vancouver. I came across this green Travelall exactly 2 years ago (30 April 2020) in the Hastings-Sunrise neighbourhood.
Wow!! Brings back my 12-13 y/o self!
And this c.1963 GMC pickup, shot today in Cedar Cottage.
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Genuinely beautiful shots!
Thanks Daniel!
Nice .
In 1976 I briefly owned a 1968 Chevy Van 108 , it was my Boss’ old truck and he’d dented every inch of it but it ran like new .
I too disliked how noisy they were inside, like riding inside a snare drum .
I get so many memories from that Corn Binder Travelall, I logged many many miles in them all over New England in the late 50’s through the mid 60’s when we moved into town .
-Nate
It looks like its mostly body filler the bog job around that cragar wheel is very amatuerish, but I do like the chain number plate frame.
These things went through one re-style in ’67 or so, ditching the early model’s flat windshield for a curved one and moving the headlights down into the grille. Big improvement, probably picked up 10 m.p.h. top speed due to improved aerodynamics. I think with the restyle came the longer wheelbase models, at least I don’t remember seeing any of the long ones with the flat windshield. Anyway, way back I had a run-in with one of these things. The junior college/trade school I attended had a couple of the Chevy versions, and one had a bad transmission. They used some oddball Muncie 3 speed that was just like any other Muncie 3 speed except for the tailshaft housing that had this hanging transmission mount on top. Naturally the tailshaft bushing was but a memory and the output shaft had destroyed the oddball housing causing an oil leak which took out the rest of the transmssion. No problem rebuilding the gearbox but the tailshaft housing was unobtainium even in the early 80’s. Luckily we were able to convince the school that the best course of action was to combine all the best parts into one van and scrap the other.
Sweet ride but needs new sills welding in….
1965 Mercury Econoline Supervan made in Canada.
Thought you guys might like this one.
In So. California on family trip in ’72, was first time I saw “custom vans”, and many were Chevy/GMC like this one. This pre-dated the ‘love van’ craze of the mid 70’s. Back then, auto fads started in CA, and rolled Eastward.
Saw this camper yesterday, displaying a slightly more philosophical message to following vehicles.