Custom Vans

Whether you were travelling in the Mystery Machine with Scooby-Doo and crew, or just pulling bongs in the back of a Dodge Econoline airbrushed with a scene from Norse mythology, the customised van was like a clubhouse on wheels for the groovy youngsters of the seventies.

A Top Five hit, Sammy Johns’ Chevy Van perfectly encapsulated the 1970s van fantasy; Man in van picks up nubile hitchhiker; man has sex with hitchhiker in back of van (whose interior is doubtless covered in thick shag carpeting); man deposits hitchhiker in out-of-the-way town and drives on.

This archetypal scenario was later the basis for The Van, a 1976 movie starring a pre-Taxi era Danny DeVito.