And in the beginning GM created the VAN , and GM said it was good and named it Chevrolet.......

I ordered my van back in the middle of 75 and picked it up from the dealer in Oct. of 75, it started out like any other van coming of the GM assembly line in Lordstown Ohio back in late 1975 For a while it remained stock and empty. Then I decided it was time to do to the van what had been intended since I ordered it "CUSTOMIZE IT"

Plastics Phase,
OK so I fell into the same trap so many other van owners did back then, I bought all of the quickie bolt on fiberglass accessories So in the midst of the Van Conversion craze circa 1976 came the usual store bought add-on's I could find. Wheel well flares, front spoiler, scooped hood, sun visor, Chevy emblem windows, Chevy emblem roof rack and a roof spoiler, running boards, fog lights...... and all those CB antennas 10-4 Good Buddy well it was the 70's and with songs like Convoy and the movie as well there was a truckin and CB Radio craze in the US. Anybody remember those days? So after the outside modifications came the interior, in the front an imitation brick wall with a rosewood door to the bedroom and a home stereo system with a record player an oak parquet floor, wet bar with a sink and fridge and the entire front was covered in brown teddy bear fur! in the back no windows and a side to side 6' long bed with the walls and ceiling covered in gold velour, oh boy today we would look at that and think what the hell was he thinking but back then it was a lady catcher. The back actually was very simple compared to the front. And I thought it was good, but not good enough as time will tell. By chance I joined a local van club which if any of you are old enough to remember there were at least 3 or 4 in every town that had a van. One day the club went to a custom car show at the LA Convention Center and lo and behold Custom Vans were everywhere. One in particular caught my attention "Rainbow Rider" and I said to my fellow van club members "Hey I could build something that good" of course everyone in the club said "yeah right you".... Well that's all I had to hear, and since I had just been promoted to shop manager at a custom van shop that was a dangerous thing to say. That is such can be dangerous if custom vans are your true interest AND LOVE. Dangerous to your pocket book. And dangerous to your van.

So out with the old interior and start all over again except this time no limit on expense so anything was possible. Like a tornado hitting it there was nothing left of it inside or out, "TOTO I DON'T THINK WE ARE IN KANSAS ANYMORE", nothing of the old interior was saved this was going to be a completely different beast, this time it was going to resemble an aircraft interior complete with two brushed aluminum bulkhead walls with elliptical passage ways to separate the cockpit from the middle section which would be the entertainment and passenger section and would have a built in home stereo center complete with quadraphonic reel to reel and a turntable and a tv built in to the wall, the other wall would separate the bedroom from the middle and each section had a door that would slide on a tract built into the wall and be powered by an electric motor so the doors would operate similar to the doors on the old TV Show "Star Trek". Ok but before all of that could be attempted the outside had to be done. This involved steel fabrication of a front spoiler that blended into wheel well flares that blended into running boards that blended into rear wheel well flares then tapered back into the body pic 80, next came the steel sun visor, then the modification of all the doors. This included a gull wing side door instead of the factory slider, splitting the rear door into a 'T" section similar to today's Chevy Astro Van but this was done back in 81 before Chevy even thought of it, then the front doors were split in to two pieces so the bottom section would open normally and the top would open as a gull wing.

I entrusted my van to a friend of mine Dave and said "GO WILD", the result was a show winner where ever it went.

Then came the 90's and its time for a change, so off with the old paint and interior and start all over again....... Then a drunk driver runs a red light in San Bernardino CA and here I go again and so with a new exterior I decided it was time to take it to England again in 1996.

To be continued
My web site

Nov 1975