Car Lust

End of the (Econo)Line: The Ford E-Series van

When word came down a couple of months ago that Ford was discontinuing its venerable Econoline van -- known since 2001 as simply the E-Series -- the news was greeted with consternation and dismay by large swaths of the American public. Newspapers carried the story on Page 1 and the airwaves were filled with vitriol at Ford's unfortunate decision and high-minded praise for a vehicle that has been a crucial part of the American road for over 50 years -- not to mention the best-selling full-sized van since 1982. Indeed, the reaction was so strong that we here at Car Lust simply had to finally take notice and deliver a post to you, the CarLusting public, commenting on the unfortunate demise of this mainstay of automotive Americana.

Okay, I made most of that up. There wasn't much reaction at all and, for what it's worth, I found all of 3 news stories regarding the decision, none more than a few paragraphs long. True, full-sized vans don't generally get that much attention anymore, certainly not since the minivan made its appearance and caused us all to bemoan (or celebrate) the day when we became minivan-driving-soccer-moms/dads, or when the SUV started grabbing a significant market share leading to all sorts of smackdown by partisans on either side.

It doesn't get many props, the humble cargo van, but chances are you've either used one or depended on one at some point, probably recently, and often never even noticed it. They're a staple of commercial fleets for hauling cargo, for use as mobile workshops by all manner of craftsmen, and have been a staple of various organizations for hauling people around. But now, as it is about to fade into memory let's take a few minutes to, well, notice it for once.

Just A Little Neighborhood Car Show

It's the dead of winter here on the North American continent, and most of us are stuck indoors for at least a few more weeks. So what do we do to keep our automotive sanities until the buttercups bloom? How about a very short trip down Memory Lane when the days were longer and warmer?

Bellevue, Tennessee is a friendly suburb of Nashville and once a month in warm weather some local folks assemble at the Bellevue Mall parking lot to display the vehicles they've been waxing and/or working on. I had been wanting to see this car show for a few years, but never seemed to catch it. But as Fate finally dictated, I got the location, time, and date for the event together, and this show just happened to be the last one of the season, held on October 1, 2011.

There was taped music from the '50s, and a live band was making cool sounds. Somebody was cooking hot dogs and selling cold drinks, which greatly added to the spirit. Cars of many nationalities and ages were presented, and there wasn't a bad one in the bunch.

Great (?) Commercials--Subaru of America's "The New Look" (1969)

In the grand cinematic tradition of the action-packed Corvair in Action!, the romantic Koers Amerika met de Holland-America Line, the harrowing Death to Weeds, the insanely comic Inside Story of Modern Gasoline, and the groundbreaking classic Your Name Here, comes director Malcolm Bricklin's 1969 magnum opus, The New Look:

My comments come after the jump.

Studebaker Week: SDC Ohio Chapter 2011 meet

If you've been following Car Lust for a while, you may have noticed that I have a thing for Studebakers. When I heard that the Ohio Chapter of the Studebaker Drivers Club would be having its annual meet in Tallmadge, not far from where I live, there was no question that I'd be going.

The people who put this event on bill it as the largest one-day Studebaker show in the world, and they're probably right. This was not merely a large gathering of Studebakers, this was total Studebaker overload. According to the lady at the registration table, there were 139 Studes and Packards signed in as of about 1:30 in the afternoon, and more kept arriving even after that.

I lost count of the Larks and Avantis, there were so many of them--enough that they'll be getting their own posts in the next couple of days. As for the rest, we'll start the tour after the jump.

5th Annual Lincoln Highway Car Show

Saturday, August 13 was a perfect day for a car show in Ashland, Ohio; sunny and warm, but not oppressively hot.
The show organizers had extended a particular invitation to Studebakers, and there were six in attendance: a Golden Hawk, two Gran Turismo Hawks, a hot-rodded "bullet nose" 1950, a mild custom pickup truck, and a thoroughly cuddly Lark VIII convertible.

Great Rides of Summer Week: A Two-Story Jeep Wrangler

It wasn't long ago that I saw a Top Gear episode where those three gentlemen each "built" an RV. Richard Hammond had a Land Rover 110-based motorhome that "grew," James May's Lotus-inspired device was somewhat cleverly compact, and Jeremy Clarkson's tipsy Citroen CX colossus, complete with Japanese contemplation area, is shown here on the right.

They had previously done a show on caravaning that ended in, of course, hilarious disaster. And needless to say, before this "Build your own RV" show was over I was again rolling in speechless hysterics, literally falling out of this chair. I've frequently explored the prospect of building my own camping vehicle, pushing my living-space-expanding quasi-engineering skills to the limit, but none of my ideas even closely approached the extremes that these fellows (And the TopGear writers and producers) had come up with.

So in a recent Car Lust Weekly Open Thread, I asked for submissions ideas for our upcoming "Great Rides of Summer" week. Commentor "RipRip" mentioned the Jeep Wrangler, and he (Or she?) could not have been more Right On! I've never owned a Jeep, but frequently have tried to buy one as they turned up for sale in the neighborhood. One of these open-top trucks would make a great vehicle to play with here on the farm, be great to shuttle gasoline and diesel fuel containers with, and would be fun to just putt putt around in. But a purchase deal has just never worked out.

All-American Week: The "Spirit of America" Chevrolets

If anybody remembers our Nation's Bicentennial Year, then they remember these limited edition cars. 1976 seemed to start out like most any other year, except we had "The Brady Bunch Variety Hour" to suffer through. "Charlie's Angels" gave us some great models to gaze at, and the cars weren't bad either.

But in 1974, a couple of years ahead of schedule and maybe to boost sales, Chevrolet sold a really nice trim package on their El Camino, Impala, Nova, and Vega models. Some dealers may have added this trim to other Chevy car and truck models as well.

The outsides were painted white with red and blue stripes, and sported "Spirit of America" emblems; the insides had white seats, red carpeting, and black dashboards. Looks like they had some nice wheels, too. They were not featured in the sales brochures that year, and getting detailed information on all of them is a bit tricky.

So let's just look at a few images of these cars:

The Best Trucks GM Ever Built (In My Opinion)

When the 1973 Chevrolet and GMC half-ton pickups were introduced, they were the first truly streamlined pickup trucks on the market. And their timing could not have been better... imagine a pickup truck that was designed in a wind tunnel and introduced just in time for the first gas crisis.

What makes these the best trucks GM ever built? Well, they were breakthrough vehicles--the first, in my opinion, of today's modern pickups. No previous truck had combined rugged workability and pleasing creature comforts like this before.

Sure, today's pickups by all brands are more modern than these, but this was the benchmark that the competition took years, if not decades, to match. They rode well and drove true, with little or no slop in the steering gear. The cabs were tight and nearly rattle-free, and you could get parts anywhere.

Ransom Eli Olds--the Man, His Cars, and His Music

By my unofficial, unscientific reckoning, around half of all automobile brands were named for the entrepenuer who founded the brand's original manufacturer. The streets and parking garages around us are filled with rolling commemorations of the life and accomplishments of the likes of Henry Ford, David Dunbar Buick, Horace and John Dodge, Louis Chevrolet, Walter P. Chrysler, Karl Benz, and Honda Sōichirō. There are still others, the founders of defunct brands, who once had their names up in lights chrome, if perhaps only for a short while: Charles Warren Nash, Harry C. Stutz, James Ward Packard, John Z. DeLorean, and the five Studebaker brothers, to name just a few.

Of all the members of this select club, Ransom Eli Olds has the unique distinction of having given his name to, not one, but two makes of automobile direct competitors for about thirty years or so, the survivor of which lasted for 107 years. We must also credit Mr. Olds with a considerable and lasting influence on American popular music. (Seriously!)

Willys Jeep Wagon and Jeepster: The first SUVs

Love 'em or hate 'em, the SUV is a part of the automotive landscape. I suppose if one were to poll the general public about what they considered to be the first SUV, I'd guess most would probably name  either the Ford Explorer or perhaps the Jeep Cherokee as the first really modern iteration of the vehicle. The more gear-headed among us might cite the International Travelall and the kooksters (or at least those willing to grab whatever comes up in Google) might even toss out the El Kineno for consideration.

"Origins" questions are always tricky, largely because most objects, unlike Athena, don't spring into being fully formed from someone's head; they usually have antecedents that have a few attributes that seem to define a particular class of object. Like the minivan, you can dig back into automotive history and find something someone built that was meant to look or function like its modern equivalent, but I think you really need to take a car's overall influence into account. A one-off that didn't sell well and nobody copied doesn't seem to me to really count as being The First of a particular class. I think if you look at what constitutes the modern notion of a "sport utility vehicle" you have to include the following attributes: a truck chassis, at least a double-row of seats in an enclosed cabin, and primarily marketed as a personal transportation vehicle for the general public.

Taken together, I hereby posit that pride of place as The First SUV goes to Willys-Overland. In the late 1940s, they came out with a wagon-ish version of their famous Jeep that was directly aimed at a consumer rather than commercial market: The Jeep Station Wagon. Besides being a consumer vehicle, it seems to me to also have those key attributes that anyone today would recognize as An SUV. Later, they even tried to broaden the reach of this new class they had invented and, arguably, produced the first crossover SUV, the Jeepster.