(first posted 4/5/2013)     All hail the mighty Metro! The finest step van ever made; the icon of the whole genre. I’ve been hoping to find one for years, and here this one was right under my nose: TheProfessor47 posted this at the Cohort, saying he shot it in Eugene. Where?

We must pay our due respects, although the credit goes at least as much to the Metropolitan Body Co. that invented and even patented the step van, and Raymond Loewy, who styled the version for International way back in the thirties. That explains why I always loved the Metro so much: it was by far the best styled van ever made, from that best decade ever for design. Read the rest of this entry »

(first posted 4/14/2013)    History does tend to repeat itself, especially in the car business. Detroit’s more recent efforts to compete with import compact trucks was once a serious undertaking, but has largely dwindled away. The same thing happened once before, in the early sixties. In response to real (or imagined) incursions into the light truck field by Volkswagen (pre-chicken tax), Detroit launched a barrage of new compact vans and trucks.  Ford was the most prolific in the 1960-1961 period, offering no less than three distinct types of pickups (Ranchero, F-Series, Econoline), the last being the most creative and nontraditional. Not surprisingly, it was the least successful of the three, and petered out after a few years. Americans know how they like their Ford trucks, and the Econoline was not it. Read the rest of this entry »