Folks of a certain age will recall the 1970s fad for mural vans - customized vans, preferably shorties, with elaborate airbrushed artwork on all sides, inset windows of all sizes, shapes and bubblicity, and shag-carpet/disco-ball interiors.
I haven’t seen one for… decades.
Now, I understand that some huge number were probably wrecked or worn out, and others repainted in embarrassment, but isn’t it odd that none seem to have survived? That not even a few people who put show-class hot-rod work into them still have their baby and drive it occasionally?
Or is it just the automotive version of the polyester leisure suit, too ugly and now ill-fitting to keep around or (gahdfabid) show off?
I saw one of the red, whit and blue Levi’s Special Edition vans in the junk yard a while back. I’m with you. I would have thought it had some, if only very little, collector’s value.
That was then and this is now. Plus those big windowless vans, which were primarily the ones with those elaborate murals turned into much smaller vans with more windows. I see many of those smaller vans with business murals, mostly florists, using some type of printed plastic film possibly. Things change.
Google image shows a few still around. I really like my 3rd link. I recall there were detail shops in the 70’s that did this work using pre-made stick on art. You could even buy the murals in kits and apply them yourself. Finding a real graphic artist in a paint shop was rare. Finding someone actually gifted that could do artistic work even rarer.
Did Ford,Dodge, and Chevy offer some basic mural art on factory vans? I’m pretty sure that I saw a few on dealer’s lots. Nothing real elaborate. It was shades of color like my 3rd link.
In the 70s, some folks used to call those “shaggin wagons”. They had a mixed reputation. Some people (mostly young guys) thought they were cool, but some folks thought that the people who owned them were wanna-be swingers who only thought they were cool. By the late 70s and early 80s or so the proportion of people who thought that they were cool had dropped quite a bit, and the idea that most of the guys who owned them were perverts was much more common.
These days, my kids call them “rape vans”. The term is in the Urban Dictionary, so it’s not like this is local slang.
Poor gas mileage and a poor reputation doesn’t make them very popular these days. There are still some folks who like them, but you certainly don’t see them in large numbers any more.
Someone near here has a “Scooby Doo” van. It is literally an old van painted to look exactly like the Mystery Machine from Scooby Doo. Unfortunately, it could use a new paint job. The paint is getting a bit faded.
Hence the common bumper sticker: “If this van’s rocking, don’t bother knockin’.”
I saw a Mystery Machine a few years ago… in London. Right near the Millennium Wheel or whatever theyr’e calling it these days. It was down in a serviceway, kind of faded and beat up, and I took several pix in a completely bemused daze.
One must remember those were built 40 years ago, and back then American cars started rusting on the showroom floor. I assume nearly all of them were either turned into new cars or returned to their original iron ore.
Yeah. Pretty much. But there must be some $20,000 show vans still out there somewhere. (=$75k in today’s cost.) I saw many lavishly-built and -finished ones at shows, in the day. They can’t have all become plumber’s beaters.
But then, I get excited when I see a real, live Pinto toodling down the road, too, and lust to own a concours-grade Yugo, so what can I say?
Mural vans are rare, but I at least see them from time to time. I haven’t seen a Yugo in well over a decade.
Just out of curiosity, I did a search on vans on craigslist for my area. There was only one mural van in the current listings, but there was one, so they aren’t completely gone. There were no Yugos at all.
You see far less cars from the 70’s in general around…so this is not a huge surprise.
Custom vans have seen a bit of a resurgence in recent years, though…HOT ROD has covered this a bit. A quick Google search for “hot rod van craze” (no quotes) will reveal some fun stuff like this article from Hot Rod and, perhaps more interestingly, this article from Speedhunteres. Vanning is back…to some extent. And there are plenty still around!
The mural vans have gone the way of the dodo. However, it seems motor homes are the new canvas for this sort of thing. Perhaps those aging hippies from the 70s retired and still need to express themselves on their vehicle. Just google “motor home murals” for all sorts of kitsch-y eagles, flags, bears, wolves, mythical mountains, and combinations thereof.
Vans were much more common in the 70’s because they didn’t have the huge numbers of SUV’s we have now available for families to crowd into; so they built more vans in general and a nich was carved out for party vans. Most people who own vans now are soccer moms and people who use them for work. The huge SUV and the Chrysler mini van were the demise of the shaggin wagon.
Aside from the shout-outs on Archer (Kreiger has several) the last one I saw was for sale on Craigslist by a band that was moving to something bigger and the mural was done by a member’s gf.
