Trucks and Vans

Camper vans are pretty awesome right? You can camp in them, drive them, lower them, be part of a scene in them, you can do loads of things with them but do you know what they are really missing? Superpowers!

What do you mean you have never thought about that before? Of course camper vans need superpowers, how else would they save the world! Luckily though Mark Hunter, a tattooist, comic book fan and dub enthusiast, has thought about it and he has gone so far as too create a set of comic book covers replacing all the well known DC and Marvel characters with campers.

It’s a bit of a weird mash up but it is pretty cool nonetheless and you can buy them as canvas prints, postcard packs or even iPhone skins and cases. I love some of the names he has given to them, some obvious like SuperVan and Batvan but some are just awesome like Dub-Mariner!

I think he should carry it on to any character like TV and Film, I’d like to see the Van Team, “If you can find them maybe you can hire the van team” all you need to do is go to your local van hire place and see what they have in stock…

Or what about one for the ladies, “Vans And The City” follow four sassy vans as they gossip and try to find their soul mates in New York City. OK Maybe I’m just being stupid now!

I thought I’d put them as thumbnails today because there is a lot of them! Just click them and you will see a full size version.

Oh and I had another idea “Vanimal Farm” either version…

There are two types of people in this world. Those who get van rental when they need a load lugger/tow van and those that look in the used vans section of the free ads, find something that has some potential and then they build the most amazing work vehicle you will ever see.

Now obviously the second type of person, is a much cooler person and they rightly deserve some praise! I started thinking about this because somebody on Tumblr posted up a picture of that Hillman Minx asking what it was and I remembered how much I love that car and how much cooler it is because he built it as his daily that could tow a trailer tent and fit a full bike rack onto!

So I started thinking about what other cool work vehicles I knew of that are easily as cool as the cars they tow. Cars, vans and trucks are built to be used so and that should never stop just because they are getting a bit older!

A while back I did a post about a COE truck for sale whilst looking at used vans and said how it would easily be the coolest flatbed ever. I still stand by that point!

A company called Street Rods by Denny had a similar idea as well because they have built a fully modernised truck to transport all their projects around. Imagine being a customer and they drop of your freshly finished ride in this!

You could even make your own car hauler like someone did with this 1958 Chevy that used to be a fire-truck and is now a ridiculously cool and very long flat bed, perfect for carrying around your matching red race car!

It’s not all big trucks that should get all the praise though estate cars are always useful parts movers and with their cavernous rear ends they can easily transport all your spare track days wheels and still be able to tow your car. Be careful you don’t go a bit overboard though and get carried away with the mods though like this 8 second Scooby WRX wagon!

Of course you don’t have to have a ‘suitable’ car to make it into a work vehicle, as long as you are willing to put it through it’s paces you can use whatever you want. Do you think these cars swap over who gets to be trailered depending on which one has the most petrol left…?

ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbon’s didn’t want to have to buy a different car to fit his surfboard in so he just stuck it on the roof of his rat rod instead. Probably.

Surely the surfboard wouldn’t be there just for looks would it

But what if you need to tow and you don’t have a car licence? Well now we’re just getting silly!

I may possibly be joining the gang soon. Looking at others this is what I have found…

I can make something cooler than any of them…

As you probably know the search for different ways to power cars is nothing new and long before people even knew that climate change existed people were experimenting with different methods, some of the first cars didn’t even run on petrol!

I’ve just been shown the first ever hydrogen fuel cell powered vehicle and it is all kinds of awesome, amazingly it was created by General Motors way back in 1966 and from the outside it is a fairly normal GMC Handivan with candy blue paint, Torque thrust alloys and whiteband tyres!

It is an awesome looking van in its own right and I would be happy to roll around in it but then you open the side doors and it looks like a retro futuristic spaceship! It is powered by a Union Carbide fuel cell that uses a mixture of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen to power the engine, this is proper 1960′s rocket science!

A van was used instead of a car because this was a time when computers still took up whole rooms and to make the hydrogen fuel cells work it took a lot of piping and tanks. There were 32 fuel cell modules that were connected by 550 feet of piping, two big tanks one for cryogenic hydrogen and one for Oxygen, 45 gallons of potassium hydroxide filled the modules and an electrolyte that was mounted behind the middle bench seat and weighed a hefty 550 pounds! In total the van weighed a meaty 7,100 pounds (3.5 tons), despite this the van could still reach a top speed if 70 mph and had a range of 150 miles, not that bad really when you think this was a big 60′s Yank van.

Sadly though after the ‘Electrovan’ was finished and shown off to the press the project was scrapped because of the cost. The platinum in the fuel cell alone was worth the same as a whole fleet of vans and obviously there wasn’t any hydrogen fuelling stations anywhere. Because of safety fears the Electrovan was only ever used on GM company property and it was only seen again when it was shown off as a display when one of the first hydrogen fuelling stations was opened in California in 2000.