(first posted 11/14/2013) The seventies was the heyday of the custom or cruiser vans, lots of bold graphics, but pretty stripped from the factory. The shagadelic interior was essentially a DIY affair, to reflect one’s own vision of what that entailed. But by the eighties, folks were too busy making money to spend weekends cutting paneling and shag carpeting. So the conversion van was born, although undoubtedly it also reflected the the increasing disappearance of large station wagons as well as the the reappearance of cheap gas. Good taste was never part of the equation though, as this 1980s Starcraft makes pretty clear. Wait till you see the dash “conversion”, with the solid wood cupholders.
Before we peek inside, let’s take in this rainbow-hued exterior first. This one is in very good shape indeed.
If somebody can keep these endlessly-changing Chevy grilles straight and tell us the year (or range of years), you’re a better man than I. But it seems to say mid-late 1980s to me. And these big vans tend to sell well when gas is stable or cheap, and the economy is doing well. Did someone trade in a Chevy Citation on this one?
So here’s the really good part; check out that massive dash center panel. Looks like it was hand carved practically. Let’s zoom in on that.
Looks like the solid wood cup holder broke in half, though, right along its grain. Too bad; who else can claim to have a solid wood cup holder?
The back? Ugh. Looks like someone’s either living out of this one, or hasn’t cleaned up in way too long. I’ve seen it parked near the university for a couple of years, and I suspect the former.
Jason Shafer can think of this as a CC public service. Every time you have unkind thoughts about your white Ford van, look at this one and think what life would be like if you had bought one of these instead. You might start liking that Ford after all. 🙂
I can remember those Starcraft conversions being EVERYWHERE in the midwest in the 80s. Even into the 90s, every big Ford, Chevy or Dodge dealers would have at least a handful of new conversion vans in a row. As I recall, Starcraft did a decent job on these, and you could certainly do worse.
I wonder if there is a conversion van museum in Elkhart, Indiana? Just checked – there is the RV/Motorhome Hall of Fame Museum, Library and Event Center in Elkhart. A check of their website reveals what actually looks like a very interesting place if you are interested in campers, trailers and motorhomes. http://www.rvmhhalloffame.org/index.cfm And there appears to be a 79 Chevy Starcraft conversion van in the collection.
This does make me feel better about a certain 2.5 ton clump of metal. Yes, this is a good contrast and can somewhat temer one’s ire aimed at a poor, undeserving, loyal as a dog Ford conversion van.
I’ve always wondered what kind of conversion van and camper mecca Elkhart must have been. Seems every bit and piece in these boasted of having been made there.
The reason these were everywhere in the early ’80s is simple – profit. The onset of invoice and up, instead of retail down pricing made the gross margins very thin, especially as the gas price shock of ’78 was being adjusted to by the populace. There were very few exceptions – the diesel Rabbits, Mazda RX-7, the X-cars, some large diesels like the Cadillac Eldorado, etc., were the only cars you paid more than $100 over to buy. That history has not been kind to them doesn’t change the facts of transaction prices of the day. So, dealers went looking for other profit avenues and the custom vans fit that bill. The captive finance arms (GMAC, Ford and Chrysler Credit) would finance invoice plus the retail cost of conversion, so you could have a profitable financial amount with very little down payment. These were also the first vehicles I recall being allowed a 60 month term.
We had a new 1997 Dodge “Imperial” conversion van with a TV and VHS player! A great road cruiser when gas wasn’t so bad. Maroon with gray accent. We even took it into NYC with friends but I had to park it 7 blocks away as it was too tall for the hotel garage. The only issue was the passenger side foot space was tight due to the engine doghouse. This was not a high top ban either.
Reminds me of…The COS!
Those are some seats, with power adjustment controls right on the armrests. Where is the radio in that rig? The factory radio would have been located where the two gauges are in the center console.
The sad part about the broken cupholders is that the factory cupholders are right underneath them. That wooden console appears to be built right over top of the factory plastic doghouse cover / console, so it is hiding the two factory cupholders right below it.
I’d bet money there was an off-brand (Craig?) analog cassette deck mounted in the overhead console.
I’d always considered living in a van during my student years, and I’d heard stories of people attempting it at my school, but by the time we hit minus double digits in January I’d be congratulating myself for splurging on heated accomodation. Another reason Eugene seems like an alternate universe.
BTW that’s a pretty dreadful van. If I’m going to risk getting splinters in an accident I’d rather have a Jaguar E-Type
Don’t know as I’ve ever seen one with the bumpers faired in to the wheel flare/body cladding stuff.
The conversion vans were popular in Sweden for a while in the 80’s, as a kind of loophole vehicle. I may be wrong, but I remember something about the cost of purchase being written off as a business expense. Every self employed plumber needs a van, so that makes sense. But every self employed chartered accountant or real estate agent doesn’t need a conversion van with captains chairs. So, for a while, you could see these supposedly blue collar vans parked in white collar neighbourhoods. Until the government changed the tax bracket to include only vehicles above three and a half tons, which killed the van import market practically overnight.
Actually for a real estate agent they are great. Ready to write up an offer step in back and sit down at the table, no need to go back to the office or find a coffee shop.
Hahaha, as a Realtor I cannot imagine the reaction I’d get if I pulled up to pick up my clients to show them a few houses in a late ’80’s conversion van 🙂
Well you certainly wouldn’t want to use an 80’s van now. However a modern one with out the crazy graphics would be a different story.
In the 90’s one of the Realtors that was big in my market local market area had a conversion van set up as a mobile office. She took advantage of all that real estate on the side and back of the van to advertise that it was her mobile office and even mentioned it in her marketing materials. Back then they were also the only vehicles that had a TV/VCR to keep the kiddies entertained while spending the day viewing houses.
When I was a kid a conversion van was what I most wanted my family to own. From a passenger perpective they couldn’t be beat. Big comfy seats, plenty of space, and huge windows to watch the world go by. Even curtains if you wanted a bit of privacy. A living room on wheels.
Unfortunately (for me) we made do with station wagons and minivans.
When I first glanced at the console photo, I thought it was a CB mike sitting in the bin. Wrong decade good buddy.
Raised roof, crazy cladding, and a color scheme only a blind man could have dreamed up? Yessir van-spotters, you just hit the Trifecta Of Ugly 🙂
With those grilles, it’s often hard to tell, but Paul is probably right. The stacked quads were available in the same years as the dual sealed beams on my featured van yesterday; duals were more the economy option, quads for the fancier window vans and those destined for conversion. I’ve never seen a definitive number, but 1985-90 seems right. (Hollander calls them “dual headlamp” and “silver headlamp”; IIRC the aftermarket names in the crash part books were more like “fleet trim” and “chrome trim”.)
That wood console piece is just nuts! I’ve seen a L-O-T of conversions, and that’s a first for me. More common were the wood cupholders that looked similar to these, but were a smaller job that screwed onto the lower part of the factory plastic console… and yes, you’d see them break a lot. Or be so soaked with Pepsi that there was no saving them.
My all-time favorite example was one I pulled from some forgotten conversion van and transferred through my many G-vans. It was wooden, it had a heavy coat of clear, and it had a change holder in the middle shaped like a Chevy bowtie. Beat the heck out of those shallow square “cup” holders on long trips.
Gotta give a shoutout to the unusable cargo ladder, too. Raised fiberglass roof, no roof rack… but you gotta have the ladder! I just threw one in the scrap yesterday which was all aluminum and had “GM” cast into each step; most were far more chinsey (ie. climb them at your own peril).
As for “where’s the radio” – good question! I’ve seen many of the raised roof vans have them mounted overhead, but that was usually in the case of a dual radio (front and back) setup.
I like the grip tape on the bumper below the ladder. Nice touch. Totally believable.
Get this sucker cleaned up and give it to the group that bought the house across the street from Westbourgh (sp?) Baptist Church. You know the one that got painted in rainbow colors. It could be their official van for their center.
Either that or I could see Mork from Ork driving it in his rainbow suspender-ed glory.
Heh, Mork was the first thing I thought of too. But in the mid to late 80s? That poor thing was never in style.
that is a really cool van, man.
Right? I dig it too. Nothing about the outside bothers me, just get a crew to clean the inside and I’m on my way!
With the new clean turbo diesels, one wonder if vans of these sort may make a comeback? With torquey TDi and better aerodynamic, 25-30 mpg would be doable soon? A van with outer dimension slightly smaller than this ’80 full size but bigger than the current minivans, say around the dimension of VW’s old Eurovan but with say 400lb-ft of torque and 28mpg on highway.
Already available, vans with turbo diesel that get good mileage and can blow the doors off old bangers like this We get em out of Japan and Korea and Europe if you want to spend lots.
Show/custom vans used to be a big deal but not like this one the detail on this is appallingly badly done.
Can you name a few brand/model? I am not familiar with models only available outside of USA. thx
I think an VW-Eurovan sized van with TDi and AWD would be awesome as a weekend getaway vehicle or plain see the country cruiser. If that vehicle can have 35mpg on highway, it’s like have a cake and eats it too.
The current gen VW Transporter Renault Trafic or smaller (non-Connect) would fit the bill but possibly the closest would be the Mercedes Vito V6 diesel for power & would do 28mpg, not sure about 35mpg. Less powerful vans could. Don’t think you’ll see 400lbft as the vans have lower tech & more conservative tune than passenger cars, the MB had 200hp 330lbft a few years back but note that torque curve is effectively flat.
Although rare on the roads, a lot of Euro-vans are available as a factory AWD model. Often done by experienced and renowned specialists, Dangel and Magna-Steyr for example.
All small and bigger vans have diesel engines, mostly around 2.0 liter displacement, so 400 lb-ft of torque is asked a bit too much. Big body-on-frame vans, like the Iveco Daily, around 3.0 liter displacement.
Some VW Transporter sized vans:
Fiat Ducato, Peugeot Boxer, Citroën Jumper (= 2014 Ram Promaster)
The Mercedes Vito that John mentions.
Opel Vivaro, Renault Trafic.
Picture of a Fiat Ducato 4×4 with a 2.3 liter diesel engine. (4×4 system by Dangel from France)
Hey, you found my old van! My girlfriend wanted to do it on the cupholder…that’s why it’s broken 😉
If they still made these vans today, the cupholders would have to come with a warning label: “Not to be used as a handhold.”
“Starcraft”? Must be sought after in Korea these days!
They are still around, making boats and RVs.
Why do they call full-size sedans and coupes “land yachts” ?
This one looks more like it !
Around 1980, I had a Tyco slot car set that featured vans very similar to this.
Once again, an earlier mid-70s Chev front clip with the horizontal grille and round sealed beams, would do it a lot more justice…
Hey now – I just purchased a split-bench seat out of the local Pick-n-Pull for my 1990 F350 that has a similar 3/4″ thick oak cupholder center console, complete with solid oak junk compartment lid!
I’m itching to install it as there are zero cupholders now with the bench seat.
And just for the record, the CB craze extended well into the 1980s, as did 8-track tape players (I worked at the Delco plant where they were made – I believe that last one was offered in MY 1984 or 1985 and I actually bought a factory-surplus one from our plant for $20, as I still had a ton of my dad’s old 8-tracks when I was going to college back then).
I even bought two of the 2700-series ETR cassete player CB radio combos. That was a really neat radio – you could be listening to either the radio or a tape ahd have the CB squelch level set such that it would cut in on your normal programming momentarily and then return. Very handy for listening for nearby ‘bear’ reports.
These were everywhere once upon a time it seemed, though brand varied by region. In these parts Vanamera was the dominant player. Lots of velour, fogged panel painting, smoked picture windows etc. I was always amazed how popular they were given that you were spending Cadillac money to buy a new one.
I always assumed the ladder was there to make it easier to repair the inevitable water leaks from poorly installed roof risers or cheap plastic air vents.
Ah, the Starfleet Shuttlecraft.
I *believe* that conversion vans legally qualified as passenger vehicles, despite starting life as cargo vans. That meant that many of them that were still running lost their lives to “cash for clunkers”.
Aaahhh yaas, cut out most of the structural roof and replace it with a flimsy FRP shell held on with self tapping screws! What could go wrong?? Plus plop in RV quality “captains chairs” that may or MAY NOT meet FMVSS standards, especially for attachment to the vehicle! Use-mostly-home furniture grade fabrics to “clothe” the interior in lieu of Automotive grade highly durable fabrics; $ure why not as the furniture grade cloth will be considerably cheaper to purchase for the converter.
RV “quality” all the way as you PAY for 60 month$ or more!! Enjoy!!! 🙂
Yup, been there done that……NO THANKS!! I had to learn to think differently while designing in RVland versus working in the real world. In fairness tho: Elkhart RVland products-overall-have improved a fair amount since I first started working in Elkhart in the late Winter of 1978.
Overall Elkhart is a pretty nice lil town to raise kids in, particularly after L.A.!! 🙂 DFO
Pretty easy to improve “quality” of the build when it was so lousy to begin with. I was working for GMC Truck and Coach division for 1978 thru 1986. IIRC around 81-82 GMC had 50 identical conversion vans built and delivered to the Zone Office in Minneapolis for a special event involving the dealers in that zone. Each dealer received one of these vans. I was helping check in the vehicles and doing pre-delivery inspections. Most A/C systems didn’t work, no Freon. The up-fitter had installed rear A/C and the boneheads had damaged the O-ring’s when they put together the A/C lines. Some of the paint work was pretty atrocious too. The Zone manager wasn’t too happy when I handed him a bag of damaged O-ring’s.
Elkhart does continue the tradition now by slapping together RV’s. another crappy product.
It’s somewhere from 85-91. The rainbow graphics are interesting and I assume probably not stock.
I hated working on those things. Putting it on a frame contact hoist, dealing with those stupid running boards and flares. Doing a tune up consisted of trying to get the dog house out, taking that wooden thing off, those oversized swivel seats, trying to get it out so you can spend time getting rusted spark plugs out..ect ect …and everyone had all kinds of crap on the console thing that you had to remove first……
I here your pain brother, only thing worse than the G-vans for service was those nasty Astro vans.
You could also write these off as company trucks, even after the IRS cracked down on luxury car write-offs. Had small business-owner neighbors who did that in the early 80s.
There was also a major GMAC scandal involving custom vans in the mid 90s. A Chevy dealer in Long Island was supposedly doing a land office business selling these to middle eastern oil sheikdoms, all financed by GMAC. Till someone there realized he was taking about 10% of Chevy’s van production and decided to look closer. Turns out it was all a scam. There were no actual vans bought, and he was using the new loans to pay off the old ones, Ponzi-style. Bernie Vandoff.
From the previous custom van epoch, a spot I worked on for Microsoft back in the day:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USz2Z7yTGEE
The van itself was in pretty rough shape. Hence no action shots.
Funny, the things a location name can bring up. Elkart IN. a place revered by many wind musicians. CG Conn was based there as a maker of trumpets, trombones french horns etc. – the full range of band instruments- until 1970 or so, when they shifted Brass instrument manufacturing to Abilene Texas. That move did not play out well. the skilled craftsmen did not relocate and quality suffered. eventually, Conn relocated brass instrument production back north to Eastlake Ohio. The elkhart era instruments being still held in high esteem. was interesting to read all these comments about the RV industry having such a strong connection to Elkhart. My childhood dream was much like Phil’s. Spent many years of youth in Ford station wagons running between NY and Calif. When those vans with large windows made the scene, we could look up from our wagons seats on the highway and see the spacious accommodations for the passengers in those rigs. Spent years dreaming of the day our dad would get us a big window, captain chaired van. no dice. Always another used Ford wagon.
We purchased a 1988 Chevrolet Trans-Aire conversion van new…the drivetrain was durable and never gave us any issues. We took a couple of vacations in it with our 3 boys and it was perfect for that…made the trip pretty easy with its 5″ black & white TV and 12V VCP to keep the boys occupied! Unfortunately, the quality of the conversion is why we only kept it for 3 years since it was beginning to rust under the “picture windows”, despite having been rustproofed by Ziebart (I know, I know…).
I have a 94 G30, with a 2 foot hi top. It was a wheel chair van for some state agency in New Mexico, I believe. So, it has no rust. The undercarriage is clean, etc. It only has around 103,000 miles. It still has the wheel chair lift, which could handle lifting a motorcycle. The lift is in the rear doors…..I had a 95 G20, which was great mechanically, but had a bunch of auxiliary problems. It rusted badly in the rear, and the floor finally collapsed on the rear right tire. But, the junk yard will pay $800 for it due to so much metal. I have seats that are like new from this van, stored……The 94 is like a new vehicle for all intents and purposes. Not sure what I will do with it. I don’t really need it, but, maybe I will try to put it to work hauling expedited freight, cuz this van is like a sprinter van, only better. .. Also, I don’t think this van has ever been on winter roads with salt.