The 1970s was a decade filled with self-expression, breaking with tradition, experimentation with fashion, inventive color and style, and a drive to be unique. That determination was apparent in the automotive industry with colorful cars and the evolution of custom vans -- shaggin’ wagons.
While high-impact color muscle cars rolled down America’s highways, perhaps the vehicle that best illustrated America’s go-for-the-good-times lifestyle was the custom van. The muscle-car apartments on wheels were a canvas for creativity that cruised down Van Nuys Blvd. in California, Woodward Avenue in Detroit, and on various strips across all regions of America.
Several auto manufacturers built already “customized” vans to take advantage of the market, and many after-market companies served the movement by fully customizing the blank van canvas to the buyer’s own vision.
These were full-sized vans, as the minivan didn’t really hit the scene until 1984. They were not today’s soccer-mom transporters. They often had beds inside, lots of speakers, shag carpet, and personalized cosmetics and features. While their popularity waned by the end of the decade, the wild ’70s saw a genre in which the wilder was the better, and each unique interior take or creative exterior paintjob was in competition with the next customization to be king of the road.
A tricked out van could include shiny chrome, plush carpeting, extreme sound systems, amped-up horsepower and museum-worthy artwork that was hip, trendy, professional and exclusive to each van. On a single cruise strip you could see vans sporting robust color, flames, stripes, lettering, and images of monsters, dungeons and dragons, skulls, mermaids, princesses, fairies, pirates, space scenes, Western scenes, animals, giant insects, naked or nearly naked objects of desire, airbrushing, brushed-on portraits and so much more. Each van was a unique creation.
The 1970s van culture was a creative moment in time, but it still plays today, and Carlisle Events will pay homage to the era at the Carlisle Truck Nationals August 6 - 8, at the Carlisle (PA) Fairgrounds. The display, called Vanarama IX welcomes vanners and all vans and enthusiasts. As part of the show, Carlisle Events has invited Kurk Collis of customvan.com to head the event, and the show features several of his works of automotive art as well as several from automotive artist Ed Beard Jr., who has 40 years of illustration and custom automotive airbrush work in his portfolio.
Collis builds his own parts and concentrates on interiors. He began by learning every aspect of the van conversion plant he worked for in the 1970s, working his way up to design engineer until forming his own custom van shop -- RV Doctor -- in Baltimore, in the late 1980s, specializing in vans and SUVs. Collis said, “In the 1970s I read car magazine articles showing shag-carpeted vans and the new breed of auto enthusiasts who expressed their individuality and took the delivery van to a new level. It changed my life and I envisioned helping them taking an old bread truck or mechanics truck and personalizing it to give it a personal meaning.”
Exterior art is what you see from the road, and while Collis continues the exterior story inside, Ed Beard Jr. creates it on the outside. Beard did his first airbrush automotive job in 1982 and moved from vans to hot rods, then to Harleys; hand-painting high fantasy, warlords, creatures and monsters, from murals to close-up work. He moved to illustrating books, calendars and novelty products, then returned to van art creation in 2010.
Regarding van exteriors, Beard said, “The art tells a story … I use different techniques for the art at hand, from airbrushing to hand brush work and fine line work. I specialize in lettering and portrait work, and I hand-draw. You can see individual hairs on my portraits and I follow a creative-theme storyline with hidden objects that you have to search out to see.”
Beard believes that the exterior and interior work together. He said, “A successful van customization has a synergy between the exterior and interior. The style and theme on exterior front doors has to be carried on inside. Kurk carries the theme with sound, collectable and fun objects, cloth, stitching, colors and panel lighting, and I add theme painting to complete the package.”
Carlisle got into the act in 2010. Collis said, “I came to the Spring Carlisle Swap Meet to sell inventory and we got a few vans together to show off and sell. Visitors and Carlisle staff saw the excitement and next year we brought – or contacted vanners to bring – 30 vans to Building T. Soon, van campers were allowed in to make Vanarama a van party. This year we will see more than 100 vans attend and display.”
There is no typical design, but common interior themes from Collis include “Two chairs in front that swivel, a bed in back, and such unique themes as Superman, or a railroad narrative, or we did one with a ‘Stairway to Heaven’ song storyline.” Collis’ playbook includes high-shine waxed wood inside, lighting that changes to the music played, lighted logos in wall (in the Superman van), center wheel logos, and what creative additions the conversion suggests to him. “We build a fluid, living thing,” said Collis.
Collis said, today’s crowd is similar to that of 50 years ago. “Today is the same as always,” he said. “It is about what the 60-year-old vanner was driving 40 or 50 years ago and nostalgia that makes older vanners feel young again. Maybe he wants to recapture the van he had or one he saw, but couldn’t have in those days. And it is about the young vanners who want edgy and not mainstream art on wheels, with navi, electronics, Bluetooth, music, lights, fuel injection and high-tech. In the end, it is as it has always been … it is about self-expression.”
Beard said, “Today’s exterior focus is not much different, stressing military, history super heroes, Marvel comic heroes or sports. And it is often personal, My ‘Orange Krate’ creation carries a family’s story in a Bermuda Triangle-pirate theme; ‘Dragonlord’ is a wizards and dragons theme and ‘Shanna Marie’ is a pirate-themed tribute to a family.”
Collis added, “At Vanarama you can see the evolution of it all. What remains the same is the company we keep. The vanner community cares about each other. We stick together as a family … the vanner family.”
Beard and Collis will show off some of their work, along with more than 100 other vanners, at this year’s Carlisle Truck Nationals, which hosts around 2,000 trucks, Jeeps, and SUVs. Attendees can take in some action with a burnout contest, low truck limbo, high truck contest, frame-dragging contest, and more.
Visit www.CarlisleEvents.com for more on the automotive hobby.
Mike Blake, former editor of KIT CAR magazine, joined Carlisle Events as senior automotive journalist in 2004. He's been a "car guy" since the 1960s and has been writing professionally for about 30 years.
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