Trucks and Vans

I have no idea if this is real or an advert for something but it is well cool! All tube trains and normal trains should all look like splitty vans it would be awesome!

Even better yet someone should do a stretch on a van that makes it longer than a bendy bus and then try and drive it normally… No? Ok I’m just being stupid now.

Does anyone know anything about this? Is it quite obviously photoshopped? Somebody find some info!!!

*Edit*

I’ve been contacted by the creator of the image and it seems it was done by Steve Moss at Split Screen Innovations. Cheers for getting in touch Steve!

I happened to be perusing the ace Retro Rides forum again today when I saw a thread about Japanese vans and campers because someone was thinking of looking for some Japanese vans for sale and wanted some inspiration and guidance of what was around and what could be done to them.

The thread (here) has absolutely loads of amazing pics but I thought I would pick out a few of my favourites for your perusal.

First off have one of my favourite things in the world… RAKE! For a van that is so square this actually works really well and even the white band tyres look good considering its modern-ness (I may have made that word up…)

This has a very 70′s So Cal feel to it for a Japanese van but it works really well and I can imagine seeing it down by the beach with all the surfboards thrown in the back!

The most distinctive Japanese style is easily Bosozoku so obviously it gets done to everything, even tiny little vans…

Slam, banded steels and flat paint. Always a MASSIVE WIN!

This looks like the perfect race car team vehicle, just because something is completely impractical for the style doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done, race car stylings on a van obviously works I mean just look at the picture! Drag racer styled G-Wiz anyone?

My car is getting closer to being back on the road soon but I still have a few months to wait and all this lovely sunny weather we are having at the moment is making me itch to get back in an old car and go for a random drive. At the moment I’m driving a Mk2 Golf, which although loved by many and praised for how well it can drive a track even as a standard car, I find quite boring and in desperate need of some decent suspension (which it will have in a couple weeks…)

I want need to get back in a car where the steering makes my arms ache, the smell of petrol is so strong I get a little woozy and the engine is so loud it scares boy racers and their 8 inch tail pipes. I have talked about how, if my car is still broken by the time the show season comes up, that I will get one of those awesome classic camper van hire things and do a show in relative comfort in the back of a splitty van rather than a rubbish tent. Ideally one day I will be looking in the vans for sale sections of forums and free ads to buy my own but with the prices at the moment that is just a pipe dream. Who knew old vans driven by hippies could cost so much!

Well anyway I’m half tempted to have a look at the car hire stuff you can get, not to go anywhere in particular just so I can bomb around in an old e-type Jag for the weekend. In fact I think I might find all the old cars that you can get to hire and make a big post about it so stay tuned!

In the meantime have a picture of a Golf that I hope the one I drive will look like soon (Except Silver).

Right first off, that has to be the best title for an art project I have ever heard!

A guy called Joe Stevens has taken pictures of vans whilst on his travels, all with the same composition and style since 1996 and now has put them all together for our viewing. Being a big fan of vans and especially American 70′s style ones I really like this. It is amazing how many of these 70′s relics are still around in what looks like regular use and because he has made sure he took the photograph in the same way every time when you just quickly look at them all it looks like a time line of one van changing through time.

I want van rental companies to allow me too hire one of these beasts for my holidays! I want these vans in that (mostly Californian) setting and nothing to do but relax on holiday. If I wanted van hire in London or something then fair enough get me a big white transit but sometimes you just need to escape in a shag piled boogie van!

You can see all the pictures here, choose your favourite, it’s really hard though as they are all so awesome!

This is mine…

Yep Summer is drawing ever closer and the first show of the year for me, Wheels Day, is coming up very fast. Held on Good Friday every year it is a huge event for a single day show and last year it just blew my mind. It rained all day and was pretty cold and miserable but I still managed to have a fantastic time and if this year has dry weather it would be absolutely brilliant!

After that comes the normal weekend shows and that is where my predicament starts. Every year I camp and every year I get rained on, one day I will have a very nice camper van of my own to live the life of camping luxury but for now I settle for tents or I try out camper van hire. I’ve heard some pretty cool things about hiring a camper van and I guess it would let me do a little trial and see if I really do want to buy one or not.

If I was going to do it though should I go for classic camper van hire? There are lots of sites that allow you to book a VW camper van for the weekend and then that way it would fit in with the shows I was going to.

I'll just cut out this little bit of rust....bugger. Erm shall we just T-Top it?

I have a feeling they might be a little bit more standard than that one though…

Or my other option is to go for the super comfy new big campers, it wouldn’t look anywhere near as good but they have more creature comforts than my house probably does and I could probably trailer my car behind them… Or even better I could just splash the cash majorly and get one of these and put my car inside it!

Who knows what I’ll do this year but I do know that I would probably read my own guide to hiring a van before setting out on my van hire quest and I will hopefully fix my car sometime soon!

Yo dude, the sun is out and I’m going out with my bro’s for a surf and I’m taking the wagon. I’ll be back in time to go to the drive in later for a smoke.

Does anyone else think this year has been a bit slow on the van front? I mean we have had the usual trucks everywhere and very nice they are as well but where have all the vans gone? Japan are still going mental with them in their own crazy ways, although a lot of them do seem to be MPV’s rather than actual vans.

So first off lets remind ourselves of how they did vans originally. Roof chops, lake pipes, graphics and murals galore!

Garish, jacked up and just simply amazing!

Now what about the japanese, the often have a crazy outlook when doing cars so what do they do with vans? The VIP look seems to work well!

Of course they also do a pretty good job of imitating American styles as these pinstriped beauty’s show!

The different choice they have for retro vans makes for some pretty smart looking vehicles as well.

So what does the rest of the world have? Dubs. That is pretty much it apart from a few exceptions, that I will go into in another post because they are that special, so instead of bay windows or splittys, have a couple mega slammed T3′s!

Excuse me while I just browse for used vans, I think I have an idea…

Two new bad ass SUV’s from Abu Dhabi have come to take the Hummer down a peg or two and with pant wettingly huge bhp figures (and ride heights!) It looks like they might be the Terminators new vehicle of choice! They are from a company called Alanqa and sound like they were named as an homage to Kevin Costner.

The Bodyguard (left) and the V-Guard (right) have a 620 hp Corvette V8, which will haul the mammoth 2,400kg beasts to 60 mph in about seven seconds and onto 130 mph. 130 mph off road must be insane!

Not much is known yet because they are having a big unveiling at the Dubai motor show next week, I wonder if it is to late to try and book flights to Dubai?  What is known however is that they have huge 200 litre fuel tanks so even at an abysmal 8 mpg they will still be able to cover 466 miles. I would imagine however that whoever buys one of these very exclusive vehicles (only 100 made a year) will either be from Abu Dhabi anyway and probably own their own petrol company or be the governor of an American state. Prices start at £75,000 and go up to a whopping £200,000 depending on what pimping gadgets you want.