How We’d Revive The Now-Dead Canoo Van To Make A Legendary Brubaker Box 2.0

The nice thing about working at Jasonia Automobile Manufacturers is that you can keep the windows and doors open essentially all the time; the weather is always perfect in this mosquito-free island nation. Of course, the downside of leaving the big garage doors of the JAM factory raised is that anyone can come in, even if you don’t want them to.

Dear Leader Torchinsky is one of the individuals who those upstairs in the design department don’t really want to see. The creative team hears the freight elevator door open and then the screech of tires echoing through the hallway; they know they are in for it. Suddenly a little electric Changli screams into the studio area and does a Jim Rockford “J” turn to a stop, scuffing up the just-painted floor. There is a parking lot outside, man — why does he need to be such an asshole?

“What’s happening, you marker-twirling  dummies?” yells Jason as he exists the little red sort-of-car and waks to the front of the room.

“How do you all like canoes?”

The staff looks perplexed; does he mean long, skinny paddle boats like the one Torch was in when he landed on the shores of Jasonia and “discovered” it years before? “Well,I hope the answer is “a lot” since I just bought what’s left of the company.” Wait a minute: Dear Leader is saying that he purchased the assets to Canoo, the now bankrupt and defunct electric vehicle maker. “Yeah, there was an auction with clay models and stuff but I just went nuts and made an offer they couldn’t refuse on the tooling, intellectual properties — the whole damn thing”.

Surprisingly, this really was rare good news from Torch. Everyone on the design team liked the Canoo, a cabover-looking EV van that was not a cabover at all. This Canoo was supposedly going to be used by the likes of NASA, the U.S. Postal Service and WalMart, so the future of the firm looked promising.

Of course, much of it turned out to be smoke and mirrors. Despite the renderings seen of multiple vehicles, the NASA contract was for one (count ’em, one) Canoo. The Postal Service? They were going to try out a mere half dozen vans. Last fall, WalMart chose to go with BrightDrop GM vans instead of buying the planned 4,500 to 10,000 Canoos, certainly one of the last nails in the coffin for the company.

Like many enthusiasts, our team was pretty bummed out when we heard about the whole thing going belly up last month after its promising start in 2017. The civilian “lifestyle” version was the one most were looking forward to.

The prospect of making a JAM-branded Canoo sounded exciting. Naturally, there was a twist. “Oh, we’re not just going to make it as-is, no way” said Jason, as the team’s hearts sank. What horrible atrocity will he want us to build out of this thing? Make it look like a DKW Schnellaster and put in an air-cooled motor? “Guys and girls, we’re gonna use this to make the Brubaker Box Mark II!”.

Wait just a minute – this might not be a bad idea after all!

Boxer Powered Box

In the sixties and seventies, Volkswagen Beetles were dime-a-dozen products you could pick up inexpensively. Then you could rip off the upper sheet metal and add a fiberglass body to make your old bug look sort of like anything from an ill-proportioned pre-war Bugatti to an MGTC to a Porsche 917. Most of these were rather pathetic looking facsimiles of real cars, but a few innovators created some outstanding, unique designs to take advantage of the Volkswagen’s layout. The most famous is probably the 1964 Meyers Manx, the first fiberglass-bodied dune buggy conversion by artist and engineer Bruce Meyer.

Another legendary Beetle chassis-based design was the brainchild of designer Curtis Brubaker. Seeing the utility of the Type 2 “Bus” but wanting a sportier interpretation of it, Bruce built the 1972 Brubaker Box, low profile futuristic-looking minivan with a single sliding door and charmingly incongruous bumpers that appeared to be curved wood beams.

Inside, the interior took advantage of the Beetle’s rather open rear-engined layout by moving the driver and passenger far forwards, leaving a large area behind these seats for a very groovy looking “L” shaped lounge area.

A small footstool or cushion could be placed on the floor like a coffee table in front of the “sofa” in back to theoretically allow for up to six passengers to fit inside and listen to Foghat on the 8-Track player. A lift-off roof panel could let in the sun but would let any cops following smell the pot smoke.

Here’s a video about Curtis that also features another person Autopians will be familiar with:

Sadly, Brubaker went bankrupt after only three Boxes had sold. Investors tried to keep the project going as the Sports Van, but they too gave up after only 25 were built. Despite the business failure, this mythical machine is a cult favorite today, a cult of which you know our Jason Torchinsky is a proud card-carrying member. The designers at Jasonia Automobile Manufacturers are big fans as well, so they’re excited to unload the container when it arrives at the port and get started on Brubaking the Canoo.

Looks Cool Inside, But…

Some weeks later, the place in the design studio where Jason had rudely parked the Changli earlier is now filled with one of the Canoo prototypes for the team to study. The styling is fantastic, with a trick way of maintaining the proportions of an old VW Bus or the illusion of a cabover Ford Econoline without the front passengers having their whole body in the crumple zone. Glass running all the way around the wide cant rail keeps the interior nice and bright.

However, two of the most trick features of the Canoo are actually things that the team quickly becomes ambivalent about. First of all, the “dashboard” is really just a beam stretching between the “B’ pillars that would really be “A” pillars on any normal car or van. In front of this area, the driver and passenger look through this large, empty space and can even see though a low window mounted where the grille would typically exist on a more traditional vehicle. This gives an expansive view and experience you likely wouldn’t find anywhere else.

What is this space used for besides your feet? Well, nothing really. The area above where a hood would be on a standard car or van is just empty enclosed space you now have to heat and cool (and boy I bet that area gets lava hot in the sun). Below the “hood” level, beyond the small amount of space needed for your legs, it’s obvious that there’s plenty of potential cargo room that isn’t being utilized. There was apparently going to be an option of some kind of trunk with a fold-out table but you can see that it’s a pretty weak use of the space:

Another surprising feature of this “lifestyle” vehicle is the “U” shaped lounge seating in back, something that tells me that a Brubaker Box appeared on at least one Canoo designer’s computer screen at some point. As with the Brubaker sofa, the setup looks relatively comfortable for one or maybe two people, but beyond that all bets are off. The Canoo made claims seven passenger seating, and five of those in this rear space.

T0 do that trick, the outer riders facing forwards three-across in back will have their legs pushed uncomfortably into the center. Inward facing side “jump” seats partially mounted to the rear doors mean that passengers six and seven will only be happy for very short trips. How Canoo thought this setup was going to pass legal in 2025 is beyond me. You’ll also see that the rear lounge seat is right up against the tailgate and leaves little to no room behind it for cargo that your “lifestyle” might entail. This lack of space creates a real desire for a frunk that doesn’t exist.

Anyway, enough naysaying; Jason could have done far worse, like bringing old Wartburg or Zastava tooling onto the island and having the designers work with that. The Canoo is a pretty cool place to start, and easy to improve upon.

Bakers Of A Strange Bru

Inspiration shots of the Brubaker and other funky people carriers like Multiplas and Space Vans plaster the studio walls while the team splits up tasks and gets to work modifying the Canoo into what is tentatively going to be called the Brubinsky.

Designer Mike works on powertrain layouts. This is a task that a large team at a “real” car company would do, and Mike rues the day Jason came into the studio at Art Center in Pasadena and offered him a job at a firm which makes Lotus in the seventies look like a GM-sized megaconglomorate.

Naturally, he wants the all-electric option that the Canoo was designed and built with, but he knows that getting those parts made on the island will be tough. Besides, there are only two charging stations on all of Jasonia; one inside the gates of Torch’s palace and the other in the parking lot of the Body Shop gentlemen’s club. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions there.

The other two options include a small two-cylinder range extender in back with a little gas tank, and then a full ICE version with gas tank up front and a flat four facing either the back in VW Bus style or facing forwards mid-engined Previa style. The team will push for a Soobie waterboxer but know that Jason will fight tooth and nail to have air cooling.

Designer Jake is tasked with doing the exterior work. Unlike Mike, he’s rather happy on Jasonia island. Jake went to school in downtown Detroit (Center for Creative Studies) and he swore to never sweep snow off of a car again in his life (and to surf each weekend in a place where a closet-sized condo isn’t $1.2 million). Jake finds the task of making a Brubaker out of the Canoo remarkably simple. The overall shape is naturally much more rounded than the Brubaker’s more angular-cut nose and tail, but he thinks he can make something work.

The two-tone paint will follow the body lines to match the old Brubaker van as best possible, while the nose and tail get fascia panels that bump out very slightly as on the original Brubaker (and not the blunt, flat panels of the Canoo). LED headlamps and signals echo the shape of the Brubaker originals. It might get rather dark in the rear area so optionally the rear quarters might be glass as well, or a colored one-way-tint to keep up the aesthetic on the outside but allow vision and daylight.

Here’s the changes in an animation:

The front and rear bumpers have recesses to allow the installation of a urethane piece of simulated wood to pick up on the famous detail of the Brubaker without having to use actual splintering timber (even Jasonia’s car safety regulations have limits).This might be like the material used on fake ash trim of Chrylser woodgrain wagons and convertibles in the seventies and eighties which came across as surprisingly realistic at the time. Side marker lights at the ends of the bumpers help with the illusion of a freestanding rectangular block.

In the back, horizontal taillights simulate the Datsun pickup items on the original Brubaker; repeater lights below the bumper (and fog lights for Europe) work when the tailgate is open. Jake tried body-colored areas like the original Brubaker has back here but it just didn’t work; the whole thing is starting to have a Bugatti vibe to it.

Once again, an animation tells the story:

By the far the biggest challenge is inside, where interior specialist Chelsea has to work some magic. Five years ago, Chelsea was about to accept a job at an OEM when she got a (collect) call from Jason. “Chelsea, do you want to design door handles for five years or do you want to change the world?” For the record, JAM has yet to change the world.

The lounge seating is ditched for a middle row of sliding captain’s chairs; if the seats are aligned. a center squab can snap in to make it a three-wide bench. In back the padded walls of the cargo area form a sort of lounge, but in a car the length of a Ford Escape there’s barely any room in this makeshift third row seat. Slide the captain’s chairs forward and you might get two people there but it’s really for two baby or booster seats (occupants so small that head and leg room don’t matter) or for somebody to sort of sit sideways as they might try to do squeezing into the back of a Scion iQ or 2+2 “Z” car. Still, it’s far more useable than the layout in the Canoo: there’s no putting baby seats sideways on the jump seats.

Once again, here’s the original Canoo layout:

Now Chelsea’s new layout:

Up front, Chelsea knows that there’s room above the driver and passenger’s feet for cargo. The dash top could lift up to access it; you might even get to it from a slot up front or a windshield that lifts like a hatchback (I tried that on my Apple car concept a while back):

Naturally, somebody on the team has savant-like memory of weird concept cars and remembers seeing pictures of the GM Runabout from the 1964 World’s Fair (where the launch of the Mustang overshadowed everything else). In this bonkers idea, the whole rear of the funky three-wheeler actually slid out of the car itself to let you roam the A&P and fill it up with groceries.

Chelsea thinks this idea would be ideal to offer as an option for the Brubinsky, but at the front of the van. Wheels can fold down (you push down on a pedal), a handle pops out of the top and you’re ready to hit Whole Foods. The back-end flips down to access cargo if you don’t want to slide the cart out. Hard to say if this will pass muster with safety regulations outside of Jasonia, but you just know Torch will be down with such mock-practicality silliness.

Jason does indeed fall in love with the finished product Brubinsky. More than likely nobody outside of a dedicated band of in-the-know enthusiast will remember the Brubaker Box. Still, who cares? That two-tone paint? The wood bumpers? A happy-looking face? What’s not to love? Besides, at least as far as practicality is concerned the Brubinsky seems to succeed where the Canoo did not.

 An “ID Bru” For You?

The most important thing? The guy that signs the checks of the person that in turn signs Mike, Jake, and Chelsea’s checks is happy. If he can keep the price down and the range up (if it’s even electric), the Brubinsky could be what Jason wanted the VW ID.Buzz to be instead of the $70,000 200-mile range thing we ended up with.

Stop by a JAM dealership near you soon; you’ll get a free a Jasonia-grown plantain just for taking a test drive, so what have you got to lose? The Brubaker Box is back, and maybe this time more than 27 people will see its charms.

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