One of the great things about old cars is they’re so easily able to illustrate a specific time in history (well, at least the last 120 years). Conversion vans are definitely one of those vehicles – remnants of a relatively short-lived fad that could have been an outgrowth of the craze for VW Type 2 vans in the late sixties. Take dad’s old trade van, airbrush something cool on the outside, and pick from a list of bar/shag carpet/heart shaped windows/quadraphonic stereo with 8-track player/bed/captain’s chairs/tuck-and-roll vinyl to complete the effect. Sure, you’ll want to throw a whole bottle of Lysol at the interior of this thing, but after that, it’s the perfect canvas for a restoration, not to when it was new, but to its reinvention at the age of ten or so. You can find this 1964 Ford Econoline for sale for $3500 in Santa Rosa, CA.
The seller concedes the paint looks better in pictures, and there does appear to be some rust. However, those silly flared fenders and the Shelby wheels are just perfect, and the white sides above the belt line are just screaming out for some kind of embellishment, whether it be a diamond-shaped bubble window, a howling wolf, a rocket launching, or all 3 (why not??). As for the interior – well, you can get creative with shag and vinyl, or you could go contemporary (no windows, so nobody will see, right?) and take your inspiration from one of the many van-conversion companies that still exist. Or, skip all that and drive it to San Francisco/Portland/Brooklyn and watch the hipster hoards line up to hand you a profit for that perfect accessory.
Rusty But Trusty 
March 21, 2014 at 4:04 pm |
I had one of these for a minute when I was 17; it was barely drivable, but I did anyway!