Trucks and Vans

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So a while back I posted up a picture on the LLE Tumblr that was a cartoon style drawing of famous movie and TV cars re imagined as vans (the post is here – “Film Cars As Vans“). I filled in as many as I could think of and then with the help of a few of my awesome Tumblr followers I got a couple more. This is picture with what each van/car is below.

film cars as vans multipic Its Cooler As A Van

Going from left to right

1. Back To The Future  -Delorean

2. Ghostbusters – Ecto-1

3. Dukes of Hazzard – General Lee

4. Transformers – Optimus Prime

5. National Lampoons Vacation*

6. Speed Racer – Mach 5*

7. Herbie – The Love Bug

8. Starsky & Hutch – 1976 Gran Torino

9. Blues Brothers – Bluesmobile

10. Toy Story – The Pizza Planet Delivery Truck*

11. Waynes World – Garthmobile

12. Pee Wee’s Big Adventure – The Red Bike**

13. Top Gun – F-14 Tom Cat

14. Maximum Overdrive – Happy Toyz Truck (Trucks* is a remake?)

15. Death Race 2000 – Alligator Car

16. Thomas The Tank Engine

17. The Monkees – Monkeemobile

18. Batman – Batmobile

19. Knight Rider – KITT

20. Grease – Grease Lightning

21. Titanic

* I didn’t get originally – Thanks to The Science Of Random

** I only just filled in thanks to finding the original prints

I have now found where the picture came from and it is a series called Cooler As A Van by Brandom Ortwein and he sells the drawings as canvas pictures, iPhone and laptop skins and t shirts. He has done each van as a seperate picture and alos has some others that aren’t on the compilation picture above.

Tron

Tron Van1 Its Cooler As A Van

Blues-Mobile

blues brothers mobile as a van Its Cooler As A Van

Back To The Future – DeloreVan

delorean van Its Cooler As A Van

Grease Lightning

Greased Lightening Van Its Cooler As A Van

Maximum Overdrive – Happy Toyz Truck

Happy Toyz Van Its Cooler As A Van

My favourite is this Titanic one, complete with flat tyre! Ha!

Titanic as a Van1 Its Cooler As A Van

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Nations Trucks free AK47 with every used van 500x379 Guns N Vans

Americans love their guns don’t they. They love having them, they love using them and they love getting them for free. They also like big cars, vans, SUV’s and bigger vans so what better way to entice an Orlandon (? Floridian? meh…) to buy a new or used van from your dealership than to offer to get a free AK-47 with every purchase!

Remember that part in Bowling For Columbine when Michael Moore goes into a bank and opens up a new account and gets a free gun? Well a used vans dealership called Nations Trucks in Sanford, Orlando has decided it was a great idea and they are now offering a $400 voucher to a local gun store to anyone who wants to purchase one of their used trucks.

Who knows if the owner is a massive red neck who just loves guns or if he is just a savvy marketer and is using it as a publicity stunt. The story has gone pretty viral all over the internet and I started writing this yesterday only to go home and watch Russell Howard’s Good News where he even mentioned it! It seems to be working as well because the dealership said they have booked in 47 appointments to view trucks in one day compared to their normal three!

All publicity is good publicity hey!

So would you be more tempted to go their or would you prefer to buy your used vans from a more reputable source?

The builders will be with you in just a few seconds sir…

Gasser Van 500x333 Tumblr Pic Of The Day

Gasser Van Via LLE Tumblr

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Super Vans!

Spider Van 500x715 Super 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!

hillman minx estate towcar holiday 519x345 Awesome Work Vehicles

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!

Chevy COE Awesome Work Vehicles

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!

street rods by denny tow truck 500x375 Awesome Work Vehicles

street rods by denny tow truck unloading 500x375 Awesome Work Vehicles

street rods by denny tow truck unladen 500x375 Awesome Work Vehicles

street rods by denny tow truck chevy pickup 500x375 Awesome Work Vehicles

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!

58 chevy car transporter 500x313 Awesome Work Vehicles

58 chevy flatbed 500x233 Awesome Work Vehicles

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!

8 second wrx estate 500x333 Awesome Work Vehicles

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…?

towing burnout 500x375 Awesome Work Vehicles

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 icon wink Awesome Work Vehicles

billy gibbons rat rod 500x333 Awesome Work Vehicles

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

piaggio ape trailer Awesome Work Vehicles

A lot of people think the German car scene is a brilliant but overly technical and a bit too clinical and clean for some and the ‘perfect’ cars they make are technically flawless but don’t really have much spirit or emotion in them. VW are majorly included in this and they still have a bit of a ‘cold steel’ vibe to them. It is a bit strange because they have such a huge following and a lot of people live and breath with dubs and the dub lifestyle, especially with the company’s old camper vans which are easily the most iconic vans ever. It started off with split screen campers and then bay windows but now because of the rarity and price of decent older buses a lot of people are using used vans from only a few years ago and the T4 scene is quite large now with many being converted into campers.

VW obviously like the scene they are a part of here and want to show the larger public just how fun they are and they don’t just produce Golf hatchbacks but they are a company that has given a lot of people a lot of joy for many many years. So their latest ad campaigns have been designed to do just that. Using the idea of incorporating hidden cameras, the public and viral videos they have been setting up lots of ‘fun’ situation that change peoples every day life just a lit bit so that it is more enjoyable.

The campaign was called ‘Fast Lane’ and it involved VW setting up situations so that people had a bit more fun on their journeys.

Like a slide instead of the stairs in a Berlin train station.

Or a lift that was turned into a rocket!

But easily my favourite is the Skateboard trolley! I want a go!

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

maroon chrome moons 500x375 Mazda B Series Minitruckin

17 inch msrs 500x375 Mazda B Series Minitruckin

17 inch chevy avalanche rims 500x331 Mazda B Series Minitruckin

15 inch classic toyota 4x4 rims 500x375 Mazda B Series Minitruckin

tsws front 500x375 Mazda B Series Minitruckin

tsws 500x375 Mazda B Series Minitruckin

sparking 500x375 Mazda B Series Minitruckin

smoked lights camber 500x264 Mazda B Series Minitruckin

red b2200 500x375 Mazda B Series Minitruckin

paint 500x333 Mazda B Series Minitruckin

orange 500x374 Mazda B Series Minitruckin

no pick up bed 500x333 Mazda B Series Minitruckin

front 500x375 Mazda B Series Minitruckin

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!

electrovan exhibit 500x367 The First Hydrogen Fuel Cell Powered Vehicle

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!

ElectroVan interior The First Hydrogen Fuel Cell Powered Vehicle

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.

Electrovan cutaway 500x375 The First Hydrogen Fuel Cell Powered Vehicle

Electrovan fuel tanks 500x346 The First Hydrogen Fuel Cell Powered Vehicle

ElectroVan 01 The First Hydrogen Fuel Cell Powered Vehicle

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.

1966 electrovan driving 500x350 The First Hydrogen Fuel Cell Powered Vehicle

1966 electrovan driving 2 500x337 The First Hydrogen Fuel Cell Powered Vehicle

pixel The First Hydrogen Fuel Cell Powered Vehicle

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