Earlier this week, some of you might have been questioning my sanity after reading my essay on Tuesday about Illinois’ recent shelter-in-place order as I had related it to a Ford F-Series pickup from the mid-’70s with a flat tire. Don’t worry. I’ve since met with my therapist (remotely) a few days ago, but that’s neither here nor there. Just one month ago, I had written about a ’65 Ford Econoline spotted in my neighborhood. Looking westward in that general direction from my living room windows this past weekend, I remembered another once-traditional, rear-wheel-drive van I had seen parked on the street here in Edgewater: the two-tone beauty pictured above.
I was in elementary school when the Chrysler minivans had made their hugely impactful first appearance. At that time, and to my young eyes, the Plymouth Voyager and Dodge Caravan seemed novel, innovative and actually a bit futuristic. This may be hard for some of the younger readers to fully understand, but there was a time when the minivan was not necessarily associated, in an admittedly pejorative sense, with “soccer moms” and a certain staid, sanitized, sheltered, suburban existence. (I’ll qualify that by saying that two of my siblings own minivans.) The Voyager and Caravan were genuinely cool. Before they arrived, though, transporters like this GMC G-Body were what most people thought of when thinking about a “van” in any form.
Such a composite naming structure seems excessive for such a simple beast as this. “Oh, no. It’s not just a ‘Rally Wagon’. It’s a Rally STX, thank you.” This very-1980s trend wasn’t limited to General Motors. Ford’s alphabet-soup-suffixed pricing tier structure also felt overwrought. (“You drive a Mustang ‘L’? Sorry. I’ve got a Mustang GLX, and I just can’t be seen with you.”) I’m unclear on the model year of our featured van and also didn’t get a clear shot of the license plate, but it’s got to be from ’85 at the earliest and ’91 at the latest, given the front grille and lack of chrome surrounds on the side-market lights.
This top-tier Rally STX is on a 125″, long-wheelbase platform with an overall length of just over 202 inches. Some of them were built in my hometown of Flint, Michigan, as well as in Lordstown, Ohio and also in the Scarborough division of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. I have limited experience with these kinds of vehicles outside of a handful of childhood memories of having sunk luxuriously into the “captain’s chairs” of a conversion van. These conveyances were once very common. My brothers and I even had a slot-car van, though it was a Ford Econoline. It very tricky to corner when racing against the red IMSA Chevy Monza or blue ’71 Plymouth Satellite on the track we would set up on the laundry room linoleum, but its built-in handicap of being somewhat tall and cumbersome made it fun to “drive”.
Today is already the second Friday of Spring 2020 in the northern hemisphere, and I wish I could be outside walking around my neighborhood, as I was when I saw and photographed this van. Maybe a quick break and a couple laps around my block are warranted while I work from home, provided that I thoroughly wash my hands when I return home after handling door knobs, pressing elevator buttons, and so on. If anything, being “held hostage” in my own dwelling by a global viral pandemic has given me an increased appreciation for a lot of seemingly simple things I am definitely guilty of having taken for granted prior to COVID-19’s appearance. In the meantime, we’ve all got to rally to get through this. Be well and safe, Curbside readers around the world, and have a good weekend.
Edgewater, Chicago, Illinois.
Monday, July 1, 2019.
Great piece, Joseph. I became very familiar with these as a technician at Indianapolis Cablevision in the 80’s. You are correct as it is at least a 1985 or newer as the tail light lenses were enlarged and the side marker lenses were changed from 1984. Most of the ones I used as a service van were powered by the 305 or 5.0 liter small block and the three speed turbo 350. I always found it interesting that the locking steering column did not appear until MY 1982 on these. One thing that really sticks in my memory was how difficult it was to remove and the replace the engine cover /console when doing any work on the engine. After you slid the seats all the way back you could remove it without much difficulty but when you tried to reinstall it the very thick foam rubber gasket was almost impossible to keep in place so it would seal properly against outside air coming in from the engine compartment. After 1985, Indianapolis Cablevision began ordering these with the 4.3 V6 in the quite rare SWB model with the stagecoach side doors. I always liked stagecoach doors better than the sliding ones as they never had a track to become damaged or disengaged.
Thank you, Glenn. Come to think of it, I may have come to associate these vans with companies like your one-time employer. I’m fairly certain that in a GM-centric town like Flint, Michigan, many of the work vans would have been Chevrolets and GMCs (versus Ford or Dodge).
In the late ‘90s/early ‘00s my university had a small fleet of full-size vans of this vintage for the use of student organizations, so I got to drive each of the Big Three’s products. I thought the GM vans drove the easiest by far, followed by Dodge, with the Ford a distant third (really sloppy steering on our example).
These were not as common as the Ford/Chevy/Dodge trio, but I do recall seeing them around. Am I the only one who spent years misreading those emblems and calling this a Rally Six? Which didn’t make sense, because I knew they seated at least 8 and would almost always have had 8 cylinders.
A BIL’s parents were thrifty farmers in northern Indiana. His mother saw a really nicely equipped Chevrolet version (Beauville? Sport Van?) at a dealer around 1985 or so. He told me it was the biggest fight he ever saw his parents have, but she got her van. It was very nicely fitted out inside.
I wonder if I would have liked these better if most of my wheeltime in these had not been in a rattly, squeaky, worn-out cargo version that didn’t run all that well. A very nice find, nevertheless.
JP, your comment, along with the picture of the badge that showcases the font of the lettering, brought back a vague memory that I, like you, might have misread this as “Rally SIX”.
As if GMC (like Pontiac had before with the Sprint Six) engineered a high-performance six-cylinder and was touting it with chrome badges. Fascinating – I hadn’t thought of this for years.
I was a lacrosse player in high school and I had an STX defenseman stick so I grabbed an STX emblem off of one of these on one of my junkyard visits for my ’77 Grand Prix and glued it to my stick.
Thats all I got about these other than they just lived in the background of life in the ’80s. No real collector interest in them so they all got scrapped and the ones with Vortec 350s and TH700s became drivetrain donors.
Joe, this is an interesting one. Heavier duty given the eight lug wheels but on the mid-range wheelbase. It seems most of the heavier duty ones were on the long wheelbase, but that is also anecdotal.
I drove several of these when I started my career in the mid-90s. All were the long wheelbase versions and were horrible, horrible, horrible to drive. Power from the 350 was decent but they rode like a log wagon and had nowhere to put your feet. Granted, the ’92 Dodge van was also short on room but the Dodge and GMs paled next to the ’95 Ford E-350. The Ford drove much better, had room for one’s feet, and was much quieter. All were passenger versions, not cargo, but the only difference was having seats. To be fair, I have never driven the older generation of Econoline for a true comparison with the GM vans.
Perhaps I would have a higher opinion of these if I drove a lighter duty version with the wheelbase of our featured one. If nothing else these are very durable rigs as I still periodically seen one on the road.
You remind me that I still think of these as the “old rustbucket vans” as compared to the “new” version that came out in the mid 90s. Now, these are not common at all (especially in this condition) and most of the “new” ones now fit in the old rustbucket van category.
The extra-long wheelbase (somewhere in the 145-148″ range iirc) was a late addition, not arriving until the very late ’80s. Through the ’70s and most of the ’80s GM topped out at a medium (standard) length 12-passenger van.
The 146-inch LONG-wheelbase variant came in 1990, GM’s first year for their 15-passenger van.
These vans, especially the Chevy versions, were ubiquitous in the ’80s. One of my weird elementary school pastimes back then was “vanspotting.” I liked to tally the different trim levels of Chevy Vans…most were top-of-the-line Beauvilles, but occasionally I’d see a base trim “Sport Van” or the real unicorn of them all, the mid-level “Bonaventure.”
Wow, that looks really dorky when I type it out. 🙂
Not dorky at all. For what it’s worth, “Beauville” was a nameplate that I probably mispronounced forever. And I can’t remember paying attention to a “Bonaventure”. I’ll Google one now. Thanks!
…It looks like the Bonaventure was only offered in ’81 and ’82 (according to Wikipedia, which I understand isn’t always 100% correct).
Even without the STX, why Rally? I can’t quite see these drifting on a gravel road in the Alps or New England? Maybe it was an allusion to the passenger space; a perfect vehicle for hauling folks to a protest rally. Or perhaps just a pep rally.
My guess is that it refers to the the term rally as in “a gathering of people” — think of a pep rally, for instance.
Out of curiosity, I just checked out my unabridged dictionary, and there are 24 definitions of the word rally. An automobile race is the very last of those 24 definitions.
My father bought a beautiful, lighty-used Rally STX (LWB) back in the late 80’s/early 90’s for business use. He got it for a relative steal because the salepeople at the dealership insisted it was a six cylinder (presumably rendering it underpowered), as the STX logo (as shown in J P Cavanaugh’s post) is very easy to read as SIX. It had some verison of the Chevy small block V8 and the Turbo 350 transmission, and performed just fine. The only real downside of these (and similar vans) is how difficult they were to keep warm, cabin-wise, in the wintertime.
A friend’s father, who was the first guy I ever knew who bought a new passenger van, gave me this advice: Never buy a van without front & rear heat/air or without power locks. His 73 Dodge Royal Sportsman had neither, which is how he learned that lesson.
Sage advice, indeed.
Scarborough is definitely a part of Toronto, but there is no GM plant there. You have to go farther east to Oshawa, Ontario to find the General Motors plant.
The General Motors Sarborough van plant was in Toronto for decades, on Eglinton Ave East near Warden. It’s a shopping plaza and movie theaters now . The plant started in 1952 making Frigidaire appliances. They began van production in 1974 and continued until 1993.
I toured the plant in 1989, which was fascinating, and I’ve owned 3 vans made there.
Going from Frigidaires to these vans – not a lot of difference other than the location of the doors and shelves vs. seats. 🙂
Haha. . You know, you’re not wrong here. These Van’s were engineered to be easy and inexpensive to assemble. I saw this on my plant tour. There’s no separate frame. The entire van is relatively simple steel stampings spot welded together so only one type of process and one single assembly line is used to make the entire van.
There was no welding robots and no automation. Every step was done by real people wielding simple equipment. Very old school. Imho the only technical difference between welding up a 1950s fridge and a G van is the length of the assembly line.
Thanks, I used to date a girl across the road from that plaza. I didn’t realize that it ran into the ‘90s.
Seventeen Chariots, thanks so much for the clarification. I appreciate it very much.
I always enjoyed touring car / truck plants. The last such tour I took was an abridged one at Flint Assembly back in the summer of 2015. (“Abridged” as in it wasn’t the normal, full tour – just riding through some key areas on some carts. It was a still a very cool experience.)
Bad guys used to steal caravans back in the day when robbing banks n stores etc BC it had room for the bad guys, room for whatever they were robbing and it was quick (in relative terms) and handled well – again in relative terms. No other vehicle suited the job better. Similar in Europe way way back,… bad guys used the citroen traction aqdvance as it cud out handle police cars of the time and had space to do bad things.
Hey, I’m not questioning YOUR sanity, Joseph, but I’ve been locked down here for almost 2 weeks…
One thing I’d like to touch on is your point of the minivan being aspirational at the time… if my memory serves me, back in the early 80s, the suburbs themselves were also still seen as aspirational, at least to folks like my parents. While we never made the jump to an attached-garage subdivision complete with cul-de-sacs, I was dragged along to many a model home in the 80s in places like Palatine and Carol Stream.
Chris, it’s funny that you mention the time frame of the early ’80s for new subdivisions in the Chicago suburbs, because a lot of the residential construction I’ve seen has come from that era. I like that type of home because like you, I grew up with that being the style.
I’m just glad they never bit on it and I didn’t have to grow up there! But those homes were much better than the 90s-2000s McMansions that came after.
I’ve owned three of these G Van’s, with positive experiences. Two were the short 110 inch wheelbase, which were easier to drive, with comparably nimble handling compared to the common 125 inch wheelbase. They had less rear overhang and were 3 ft shorter overall. My favorite had a 350 4bbl which actuaIly accelerated with authority.
Id love to find another but they’re no longer cheap wheels these days around here Nice ones fetch a decent price
Nice van, and a really nice house behind it, I love that architectural style. Today was day one of national lockdown here is South Africa. We aren’t allowed to exercise outside our homes, so I’m going to have to think up some strategies to keep sane…..
Pikesta, I’m right there with you about the exercise. I’m sure there’s stuff on the internet about exercises folks can do at home without actual equipment and besides crunches and push-ups.
Here’s hoping that self-containment will curb the spread of this thing for all of us around the world.
I also like the style of these houses. Some streets in this neighborhood look like they’re set in a small town from years ago – and I like walking through them for that reason. Just very calming.
Where I worked someone got the bright idea to buy a bunch of 12 passenger versions of these and turn them into vanpool vans as an energy conservation idea. Most of them filled up pretty well on specified routes, while other routes had trouble maintaining minimum ridership. The company owned the vans and employees paid to ride weekly via payroll deduction. We had a person who ran the whole program, she thought herself rather important, I dubbed her the Vanpool Queen. She kind of made up rules about waiting lists, pickup times, route sequencing, what radio station was allowable, etc. as she went along based on what she thought was right despite the fact she was not a participant herself. I eventually attained the illustrious role of backup driver which meant I got to drive the thing on my route once in a while.
The vans were all the same colour – that cream shown in the second photo. The were the GMC Bonaventure model with the sliding door. The door would never close because each entering passenger had to try to close it while in a crouched position ready to enter the third row. That meant that it was the job of the person perched in the right seat of the second row to reload and reslide it shut.
We had one driver who insisted on running over one rider’s garbage cans, without fail, on a weekly basis. Even the Vanpool Queen was unable to curtail this behaviour.
I misspoke – they were not Bonaventure vans – they were Beauvilles. Which I thought was a quirky name.
You guys and your Rally Six needed to hang around with a lower class of friends!
One of mines Dad had a Rally STX long wheelbase that was known as the Rally Sex after my buddy showed how an air mattress could be wedged in the back without removing seats.
Enough Said😎