One of my favorite car fads and eras was the custom van era of the 1970s; it was a uniquely irrational and unhinged time, and in the automotive world, that’s really saying something. These vans were targeted at young people, and while the performance and bold styling were crucial elements to marketing these things, so was the hinted subtext of all the somewhat illicit and maybe lascivious good times one could get into thanks to the fact that you could be driving around in a mobile room, completely slathered in shag carpet. In this particular situation, though, there’s something that feels a little bit, um, off.
The ads for these sorts of vans were usually done in a very specific style, colorful and exuberant kind of Peter Max-style that is probably exactly what you’re picturing when anyone combines the numbers between 1970 and 1979 and the word “van.” In this era of overwhelming grayscality, this sort of aesthetic feels alive and vibrant and fun.
I mean, look at this:
I do like the emphasis on fat tires, though. That’s something we’ve lost, as a culture. Also, the lady commenting on someone being a “seat freak” is a little weird. Maybe arousing?
Anyway, let’s look inside:
All pretty expected stuff. Though the “NEXT BEST THING TO COMPUTER DATING” is a bit unexpected. I guess it was a thing at the time? But I think mainframes were involved. Possibly punch cards.
So, there’s something called the “Dodge Van Clan,” a club for Dodge exciting van owners. I think the term “clan” for a group has been a little ruined, but at least it’s spelled with a “c.”
The Van Clan is a little confusing – that “BUILT BY THE DODGE VAN CLAN” muddies the waters; was the Van Clan for the people at the factory, or for the owners? Maybe both?
Then we get to this bit of Van Clannery:
The Van Clan had a newsletter called “Street Talk,” they had a “trip interruption guarantee,” which I’m not sure I fully understand, same goes for “auto theft reward protection.”
But the one that feels the strangest is “Legal defense reimbursements.” What did this mean? Was there a fund to pay for your lawyer or fines if you were, say speeding? I mean, these are dudes buying vans slathered in carpet, so when it comes to legal issues, I think speeding is being very, um, demure.
I’ve been trying to figure out what the hell is going on here, but so far, no luck. Do we have any old Van Clanfolks around who know what the hell this was? Was it a van owners’ legal defense fund? Was this a thing?
This world, she’s so full of wonder and mystery.
That VW Bus That Miraculously Survived The LA Fires Is A Worthy Symbol Of Hope, But How Did It Happen?
This Old Renault Van/Truck Is More Flexible Than A Rubber Gymnast: Cold Start
The Chevy Astro Van Had What May Be The Stupidest Rear-Door Setup In All Of Vanhood
I remember growing up and my friends parents, across the street had a van with the big round side windows, 8 track deck for listening to Kenny Rodgers. I had so much fun ridding in that thing. From the rotating seats and all the McDonald’s food we ate it in it, all without seatbelts. If I remember correctly it did have shag carpet also.
Maybe that comes into play when you ‘accidentally’ run over the guy who’s feeling up your fat Polyglas® tires?
Odd, I feel like dudes who drive around in vans aren’t big on feeling rubber…
I nominate you for COTD!
What about the fucking murals? Those were the best part!
Someday they will receive proper recognition and MOMA is going to do an installation displaying that uniquely ’70s art form. I personally call the style, Wild Stallion, but I’m sure someone has a better name.
My sister worked at a place called Van Fitters in Evanston for many years. I remember Van Life before it was called that.
Some people called them ‘Fuck Trucks’ for some reason.
Shag carpet is hard to clean certain fluids from.
Certainly we need to recognize the airbrushed van mural for its contributions to cheesy fantasy literature
https://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=644
Love it!
In Metro Detroit, it was “Van Stuff by Burmeister”. But you said it “VAAAN STUUUFFF by BURRRMEISTER!”
Is that Evanston, Illinois, Evanston, Wyoming, or another one I am not aware of? If it’s the first one, I have a hard time picturing it.
Illinois. On the north side of Central St, directly across from The Great Frame Up and half a block or so from Baskin Robbins. Owned by Allen Gunn before he became an attorney if I recall correctly.
Wow. I guess it was a different time.
This is the only thing that comes to mind:
“In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them….maybe you can hire The A-Team.”
The speech bubbles on the first page are just *chefs kiss*.
So glad this was gone before I learned to drive… In a full size Dodge passenger van.
Whoa! I learned to drive in a variety of cars, including a two-tone green Dodge passenger van. Dad was going to give me the choice between it and a Triumph Spitfire until I almost ran someone off the road while driving through some construction. So I got the Spitfire by default. Rolled it within 2 weeks of Dad handing me the keys. Stupid swing-arm axles!
There is a consolation prize, of sorts. I learned to parallel park driving that bus to my after school job. The record store was on a busy street, and I started right before rush hour.
I can’t remember which comedian said that all these vans looked like Molly Hatchet album covers…
Frazetta and Vallejo were my artistic heroes in the 70’s. Roger Dean style murals could also be found with the prog rock crowd.
The flower keychain reminds me that my parents had a car in the 60’s with rust spots that they covered up with those flower shaped non-skid bathtub stickers. Groovy and functional!
I don’t think the acronym was established in general English for another decade or so, but I’m really glad the product planners at Dodge never offered these in STI trim.
You, sir, get a star⭐️
Vanning was a big fad in the 70s, but this is yet another great example of the business decisions made by Chrysler that led to their inevitable government bailout in 1979. My guess is that there weren’t many people who would buy these vans that could afford to buy these vans, even at 70s prices. At most they probably sold a handful, and sold far more accessories.
Also think about your average dealer or GM in the 70s and what their attitude would have been toward these things and the people who would buy them…
The print ad mentions the “portal” windows that were poplular with these vans. That would be an interesting story on its own: See different shapes of windows that were available, how the sides of the van were hacked open to fit these windows, and did these windows leak?
Sounds like a JC Whitney item.
I was pre-driving age during the height of the van craze but being a gear head in training I of course had a subscription to the JCW catalog. I remember they had a lot of different options of the port hole windows, including a Bow Tie for the Chevy crowd, an Oval for the Ford team, but don’t remember if they had a 5 sided one for the Dodge clan.
Dad bought a 77 Dodge van with approximately 12″ round portal windows, and sometime in 78, replaced those with bay windows about 36″ tall by 24″ across. The larger windows had some curves, but were NOT intended to precisely follow the body contours. He used some kind of goop that wasn’t exactly solid-it came on a spool, but was squishy-and applied that around the frame of the windows before tightening the hardware.
The final installation was a bit rough; that was mostly due to the fact that it was done by someone inexperienced doing the job for the first time, instead of a shop that did it five or ten times per week. But he had the van for more than 20 years, and I don’t think it ever leaked.
My father dragged home a (used) Dodge Van one day circa 1978 (I was 12). I think he traded in the equally weird AMC Eagle for it. It started life as a no-options cargo van I suppose. Dark green, which someone had installed wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling green shag carpet into AND a plywood bench along the drivers side. That was all it had for passenger comfort. Two seats up front, bench in the back for three kids. Not even any windows. It was a hideous cave of a vehicle that soon smelled of my Mom’s Pall-Mall smoke. We didnt have it long IIRC and I think it was replaced with an equally unpractical Chevy Silverado, where his work ladder (insurance claims adjuster) had a place to sit, but not his three boys. lol.
No, he wasn’t the cool hippie dad. His passion was playing church organ and teaching choir. He just had his own hell-hole of ignorance when it came to picking cars.
+ This is just one of many opinions I have about everything +
Teerts Nav tells us everything we need to know
I just had a black light poster flashback. Thank you! That “legal defense reimbursement” was a nod to getting hassled for “suspicion of hippie” back then. Those pinkie hippos must be up to no good in that thing.
I do not understand why Dodge had to make these ads to be THIS level inappropriate……
It was either this (which was NOT uncommon BITD) style, or the “Picnic-In-A-Prairie” style car ads . . . . or the “swinging-by-the-country club-in-my-brand new 1975 Oldsmobile” trope. . . . yes, I have opinions about these things.
I’m getting a whole “Larry Tate doing the Frug in a vein attempt to ‘relate to the kids’ ” vibe.
“Trip interruption guarantee” had to be about LSD, right?
Could be vehicle break down 🙂
There were several van clans, often at war. Clan Dodge and Clan Vandura in particular had a lot of bad blood, with Clan Econoline often acting as intermediaries. Each clan had its own paisley pattern to identify it.
Wasn’t there a movie about this called Best Ride Story?
Only in America.
Then Toyota introduced the Highlander and vans became virtually extinct.
There can be only one.
And just like that, there was the Toyota Highlander 2 and it all went downhill from there
This is Club Wagon erasure.
It’s an old code, sir but the username checks out.
I sincerely mourn the death of fun van names that seemed to occur around the turn of the century. Even if I was 5 at the turn of the century.
For all the effort they put into marketing these, as a lad of the ’70s, I don’t recall ever seeing these factory packages in the wild. Sure, you would see custom vans, but strictly the homemade variety. I mean, wasn’t that the point? Just a van owner, his airbrush and his imagination.
The only place I ever saw one of these was in the movie “The Van” a truly awful film featuring a screaming yellow shaggin’ wagon Dodge street van. “Blue Summer” was kind of soft core porn about guys trippin’ in a van, but though it was a Dodge, it was no glitzy Street Van. “Supervan” had a wild George Barris custom Dodge called Vandora that was supposed to be solar powered and had lasers. Oh, yeah, Charles Bukowski, writer and poet darling of the artistic Underground culture makes a cameo appearance in a wet t-shirt contest. So there’s that.
Comments like this make articles like these worth reading. Your second to last last sentence needs its own Wikipedia page.
You can view Supervan in all it’s glory on YouTube for free
Ha! Some things are better left to memory.
Did he win?
The Econoline Cruising Van was pretty common.
I was going to say that Ford seemed to move a fair number of their Cruising Van, enough so that they also brought out the Pinto Cruising Wagon, which also sold well enough.
As a fellow lad of the 70s, custom vans were around. My neighbor and his friend had almost matching primer black mid 60s Econolines with the goofy windows, the shag carpet, and the “Disco Sucks” mirrors. Then in the late 80s, one of my friends had a newer Chevrolet van, complete withe the medieval or viking airbrush motif on the sides and back. Imagine the insurance company’s joy when he got rear-ended and the insurer had to pay to have to rear doors re-painted.
I bet that happened more than you think, someone is so mesmerized by your barbarian mural they rear end you.
Other than the upholstery patterns mentioned by Diana Slyter, not that exciting, I’m afraid. The “legal defense” benefit is a pretty common group benefit, usually provided as an employee benefit but not unheard of in connection with a paid membership (I’m assuming those not working at Warren Truck Assembly had to pay to join the Van Clan).
To my knowledge these group legal plans don’t usually cover vehicle infractions (tickets) or any criminal defense, and they don’t cover collision liability. But the group legal plan could have been on the hook for nuisance defense, and defense of civil lawsuits for battery, false imprisonment, slander, and the like. The person who underwrote the group legal plan would not have had the “benefit” of seeing the 1970s thru the eyes of the 2020s…
> false imprisonment
“Roger put me into a Street Van. And I’m not comin’ out.” suddenly seems darker.
No, she wouldn’t be, not since Roger removed the interior door handles and window cranks. Eventually he’ll drag her out to hide the body, though.
Especially when you realize that it has no windows in the passenger/cargo area. At least it doesn’t have ‘FREE CANDY’ painted on the side?
In the 70s, the UAW was running out of stuff to add to their luxurious benefit packages so in 78 they negotiated for “group legal services”. At the peak there were about 200 attorneys available for consultation. I knew a paralegal who was involved, she said most cases were drunk driving, divorces, and child support disputes. The whole deal went away in the Obama era bankruptcy reorganization.
Looks more Jack Davis than Peter Max to me.
Maybe a Jack Davis parody of Peter Max?
But definitely not Peter Max.
I was thinking one of the Mad Magazine cartoonists.
IIRC one of he clever things Dodge offered was patterns for cutting out interior furnishings for the van- Saved a whole lotta measuring!
Man, the graphics on that van second from the top in the stack doesn’t leave any doubt who was the target audience for these. Not that there was much doubt.
I think they’re related: getting stopped by John Q. Law (something something “rolling probable cause”) and the subsequent need to defend oneself.
“But the one that feels the strangest is “Legal defense reimbursements.” What did this mean? Was there a fund to pay for your lawyer or fines if you were, say speeding? I mean, these are dudes buying vans slathered in carpet, so when it comes to legal issues, I think speeding is being very, um, demure.”
Well the van was a rockin’ and the law came knockin’, now the lawyer’s gotta do a lot of talkin’ so the Van Clan can go a walkin’.