It’s a bit hard to imagine a time when the Ford Econoline (or the F-Series pickups) actually didn’t dominate their categories. Of course I speak of the Econoline’s long run until a few years ago when it was replaced by the Transit. But in the seventies, the Dodge van was king; in 1977, they outsold the Econoline 226k to 179k. Yet the Dodge pickup was a perpetual laggard and a very distant third to Chevy and Ford. How to explain the Dodge van’s dominance?
Maybe that splendid ’70s color scheme?
I spotted this fine relic parked not far from the UO campus. As I approached, one of our still-plentiful Mercedes w123s photobombed it. It makes for a handy comparison of two very disparate seventies-mobiles.
The second generation vans from the Big Three were a very significant improvement in terms of being domesticated to the expectations of the times. The gen 1 vans had their roots in late 50s minimalism, but that now seemed ages ago, as average incomes (and expectations) were peaking in the early 70s. For families (and others) that placed a premium over space (and space efficiency), these really were a much better family truckster than the traditional wagon: Much shorter, yet a lot roomier.
But ti wasn’t families and plumbers that pushed Dodge van sales skywards. Van fever was a raging contagious disease that was the more mainstream analog to the VW hippie vans of the 60s. Even young folks with jobs wanted in on the image of freedom, even if it came with a three year loan from the bank.
Let’s face it; the van is the the ultimate automobile form. I don’t say that just because I’m a confirmed van owner and lover, but realistically, evolution is ultimately going to favor the box, for a whole lot of obvious reasons. Especially so when they become autonomous. It’s just a better box for whatever your lifestyle choices and preferences!
And Dodge somehow managed to convey that more successfully than Ford and Chevy, and there’s no doubt that Dodges outnumbered the others in the lifestyle sector.
And that includes the actual RV industry, where the Dodge van cutaway chassis utterly dominated the field, until the market imploded in 1979 and Dodge completely exited it during its crisis of the times. As a former ’77 Dodge Chinook owner, these do speak to me in many familiar ways.
This includes everything from the iconic and legendary TransVan.
To a vast number of Class C motorhomes in all sizes, shapes, colors and textures.
They were once everywhere; now there’s just a few left on the curbs occupied almost invariably by the homeless. But not Dodge motorhomeless.
In addition to bare-bones work vans and cruisin’ vans and RVs, Dodge also did well with the station-wagon alternative set. And that’s what we have here: a Sportsman Royal, meaning the top trim level of the passenger van.
In 1977, Dodge replaced the modest little low-back bucket seats with nice high-back versions, with armrests, even.
Which does not explain why our ’77 Chinook, which came very well optioned and trimmed, still had the old low-back seats. Hmm. I might have kept it if it did have them. We also missed out on the splendid cup-holder engine topper. Oh well. And that nice striped door upholstery.
This is a 127″ three-row van, and it has very fine vintage upholstery. Isn’t that so much more cheerful than today’s drab and dreary stuff? And folks put down the 70s; they don’t know what they were missing.
The third seat. The partial sheepskin uppers are a mystery to me. Why?
And here’s the very roomy cargo area. Another bench seat could be had here, but that left very little room for cargo.
Of course more room was available via a Dodge Maxivan, the first of its kind with an extended rear and seating for 15. Or 12 and lots of luggage. Or just long rolls of carpet.
And that rear addition was soon lengthened further, and given some proper windows, in 1978.
Looking at these two Maxivans shows how in addition to the longer rear cap, in 1978 other significant changes were undertaken, with larger side windows, and the sliding door was moved to the front.
This ’77 was the last year for the original-style body, with the side door set back a bit. That small window was essentially the 18″ plug that defined the difference between this and the short wheelbase (109″) versions. The sliding door arrived in 1975, as an option to the two outswinging doors.
Here’s a swb (109″) version, with the boxier front end that arrived in 1979.
The side-hinged rear door apparently was an option but so popular that in became standard in 1977 on the Sportsman passenger van.
The white spoked wheels are of course so utterly period correct. Unless you lived through the white spoker era, you’ll never be able to imagine just how popular they were on pickups and vans.
It’s late and I need to put this and myself to bed. I could go on all night about Dodge vans, having owned three as well as the spiritual successor to it, the Promaster.
What I really need is not a Peugeot grille for it, but a Dodge one. Too bad it’s not still sold as a Dodge in Mexico or such. I’m a Dodge van lover, the Promaster will always be a Dodge in my heart.
Related:
1971 & 1979 Dodge Maxivans – Dodge Pioneers the Really Big Van
1976 Dodge B100 Short Wheelbase Van
I wonder if the reason Dodge vans were the most popular was their looks?
IMO, these were the best looking vans of the seventies, hands down. Especially once Ford went with its extended schnoz, which although more space efficient, looked really goofy at the time.
Hopefully that person has an extra ballast resistor in his cargo area. 😉
Agreed on the looks. These looked great whether stock family window van or customized in all sorts of ways or turned into a camper.
I do have a soft spot for the next year ’78 model though which was revamped some from the B pillar back but still used the original front treatment before the squared-off look arrived in 1979. Also, the dash and steering wheel were all new in 1978 and looked much more car-like (and actually used a standard car steering wheel and many trim pieces). I rode around in them quite a bit for two summers in my early teens.
Dodge vans might have sold well, but no one sang a top 5 hit about them
https://youtu.be/RFnkCIwGwiA
Or drove one to the levee, which unfortunately – in our neck of the woods – has definitely NOT been dry in recent weeks. 🙁
https://youtu.be/iX_TFkut1PM
Oh for sure! It’s finally going back down. The water was about a mile from me and there was visible seepage on one of the levees that’s still there even after the flooding has receded.
My guess is styling played a big part, but I think Ford dropped the ball on marketing when it came to the 2nd generation Econoline. For some potential buyers, the Ford van wouldn’t shake it’s minimalist image for another few years.
My “baby” sister and her husband owned a succession of these Dodge vans in different sizes/wheelbases, and I was surprised that a young woman (she was then in her 20s and their only child had not yet arrived) would actually enjoy driving such a big, blocky vehicle.
BTW, the pictured van is one of my favorite configurations for having the single slider on the side and the single door on the back.
From 1971-74, the Dodge had it all over the Ford as a family vehicle. The Ford was still kind of crude inside while the Dodge was nicely finished. The 1975 Ford began the slow process of wrestling segment ownership from Dodge.
My take is that in the summer of ’78 these vans, in simpler trim and with the added back seat, could haul loads of mental health campers to the city and state parks all over Central Ohio with nary a hitch. I still have the scar on my chin from being head-butted by one of my little charges as a memento. The back seat could be kind of bouncy, but the rest of the ride was quite comfortable and reasonably quiet. They were very easy to service and reliably tough. Memorable rides, memorable times.
One of my favorite vehicles! My best friend’s father traded a 71 Travelall in for a yellow and white 73 Royal Sportsman Maxi. It was the best family travel vehicke I had ever experienced. Once he put slotted aluminum wheels with white letter T/A radials on it (to end the wheelcover chasing game) it looked great. He traded cars frequently, but kept that one for 5 or 6 years as it became one of his favorites.
Once they reconfigured the body in the late 70s they lost some charm. The picture of the gray shortie shows the problem when the side doors moved forward – you had to squeeze past the front passenger seatback unless you opened the second hinged door.
I really wanted a Dodge when I was van shopping in the mid 90s but by then Dodge was completely ignoring the family market which they had owned 20 years earlier.
So what was the reason for moving the side door(s) in 1978? Just because everyone else did it that way by then?
I always found it odd that while they lowered the beltline with larger windows on most of the van, the front doors still used the original windows higher beltline. Dodge would eventually eliminate the vent window, but the overall window was never enlarged to match the rest of the windows.
I suspect that it was lower manufacturing costs. After the change all length differences were behind the side doors. But then again, the older version made do with a single rear side window size for all three lengths, so who knows.
I waited for a front-end refresh to match the new beltline, but it never came. It was finally in the late 90s that they moved the engine forward a bit, but they never changed those 1971 doors.
Two more words that encapsulate my love for this generation of Dodge van: “Napoleon Dynamite”.
I seriously didn’t know these were the sales leaders! That’s actually quite a cool factoid about perpetual underdog Chrysler.
We stopped in Preston Idaho on the way home from a trip to Colorado in 2006, and as soon as we rolled into town, we spotted Uncle Rico’s van parked on the street. We picked up a map at a gas station and saw all the locations where the film was shot, including his house out on the edge of town.
“Go make yourself a dang quesadilla!”
Outstanding.
I didn’t know they stopped making the cutaway version. Why? They were selling great afaik.
Does anyone remember those Xplorer camper conversions of these? They had a drastically lowered floor so you could walk around and have plenty of headroom under the standard height roof, and I always wondered what happened to the driveshaft. Or almost standard – they did something weird with a fiberglass replacement cap or something, the rear door was sealed too.
At some point during the 1979-81 crisis Chrysler permanently eliminated the big B block (400 and 440) engines. I wonder if they decided that cutaway RV sales without the availability of the big engines would not be worth the effort?
Why? They were selling great afaik.
The utterly stopped selling, actually. The ’79-’81 recession (due to the second oil shock which sent gas rices up much more than the first one) totally devastated the RV industry. As in literally killing it for a couple of years. Everyone went bankrupt, including Winnebago. Nobody was buying motorhomes when gas was shooting up and interest rates were over 14%.
Chrysler decided to totally ditch their RV-cutaway business. They probably shut down a whole plant in the process. And as Jim said, they killed the big block V8. In fact, I believe the came very close to killing their pickup line too. Or at least considered it.
Chrysler’s near-death in those years was essentially (if not technically) comparable to a bankruptcy reorganization. All underperforming business lines were ditched, union contracts renegotiated (IIRC), and all the focus was on the new smaller FWD platform.
The RV industry had a very long, slow climb back after that hit, the biggest one in its history. And it is an industry that is very prone to extreme swings, as RV are strictly discretionary items.
Ford and GM mothballed their big blocks for a time. I know that Ford finally brought the 460 back some time in the late 80s or early 90s. But unlike Ford and GM, Chrysler scrapped the tooling to build the B block engines. This was why they later made do with that V-10 that was based off LA block.
The 385 series engine never went out of production since it was used in MD trucks. For light duty trucks it did take a 3 year hiatus with the 400 being the top engine for 80-82 but showed back up in the 250/350 for 83.
Right, both Ford and GM kept their ‘big block’ V-8’s in production because they were building a lot of gasoline powered medium duty trucks and school buses. GM did offer the 454 in pickups continuously through the late 70’s-early 80’s, but I believe availability was restricted to 2 wheel drive 1 ton models. They were not often seen. I have a friend who at the time had an ’81 F-350 flatbed with the 2 bbl. 400M engine. It was quite underpowered for a 10,000 # GVW truck.
As I remember (explained to me by people close to Chrysler at the time) it went something like this: In ’72 Chrysler’s Warren truck plant had 3 assembly lines, one for the D/W light and medium trucks, one for the B vans, and one for motorhome chassis. Heavy duty trucks were built in another building on the complex. Civilian sales of Dodge heavy trucks stopped in ’75 though the heavy truck plant continued to produce the trucks for government and export customers until ’79. In ’74, medium truck production was moved to Windsor Ontario to increase motorhome chassis production (bolth class A and C I believe). D/W pickup sales had been really taking off, so Chrysler started work on a truck plant in Westmoreland Pennsylvania. As Chrysler’s financial health started to falter they sold the unfinished Westmoreland plant to VW. Soon after medium duty truck production was halted in Windsor and all B van and class C motorhome chassis was consolidated there. This move allowed Warren’s near total capacity to be given over to D/W light truck production, which negated the need for Westmoreland, and all of Windor’s capacity to be utilized for B van and curway production. Class A motorhome chassis production which had continued at Warren trickled down to essentially nothing in 1980. Rumor was at the time that Lee Iacocca didn’t like motorhomes and with the recession worsening he was very eager to get Chrysler out of that business. Discontinuing medium duty trucks and larger motorhome chassis made the ‘B’ engines redundant, and their production stopped in late August 1978. Paul is correct, at the height of Chrysler’s troubles they decided to exit full size pickup and van production. The plan was to continue the vehicles without updates until their production dropped to the point they were not profitable, by which time they would have been essentially replaced by imported Mitsubishi pickups and the minivans. But, full size pick and van sales never dropped that far and the decision was reversed in the early 80’s.
Thanks Bob for the details. I remembered the rough outlines of it, but not in this level of granularity (to borrow a word I’m a bit sick of hearing).
My pleasure. And I don’t much care for the word granularity either!
Dodge continued to make MD trucks after the discontinuation of the B series engine. So they turned to a customer they had sold many engines and transmissions to, International, who supplied them with their MV 446 engine for the 1979 and from what I’ve read 1980 model years.
Yes, and a few late motorhome chassis had the MV 446 in them as well. The medium duty D-600 continued in Mexico with 360 V-8 power until the mid-90’s.
Wow, I knew that RVs were a very cyclical business, and that there was a down period around ’79-81 especially at Chrysler with the 79 gas shortage, Chrysler’s financial woes, and the 80-81 recession, but thought there would still be some demand left. Cutaway Dodge vans were everywhere around that time in my area but they were evidently nearly all a few years old. I think Chrysler overreacted some by walking away from big cars and van-based vehicles, both of which recovered by 1983. But they may not have had a choice – conditions for the bailout included selling off or ending unprofitable or ancillary parts of their business including the turbine project, boats and marine engines, and the Airtemp HVAC business. Ending production of big slow-selling gas guzzlers of all types likely made those government loans an easier sell for Chrysler.
The 70’s van craze was so big that I recall in 7th grade in 1977, in art class the teacher handed out mimeographs (!) of the Dodge van profile, and our art lesson of that day was to create your own wild 70’s Dodge van motif!
Your art teacher wasn’t named George Trosley, was he?
There had to be some reason why the Dodge vans were the popular buy over the Chevy and Ford. Was it purchase price? Driving dynamics? Interior? Almost all the customized vans I remember were Dodges with the occasional Chevy, but oddly enough no Fords got the shag carpeting and Gandalf mural treatment that I ever witnessed.
I would say the driving dynamics of the Dodges were a step better than the Ford vans. The B series used a unibody design that was more civilized than the ladder frame that Ford used at the time. They also had a better turning radius.
A lot of the success of the second-series Dodge vans accrued from the first series of 1964-70. Dodge was the last to enter the van market, and came out with a bigger more capable van was well-styled. It was the first van with an available (273 cu.in.) V-8, and Dodge was the first to offer an extended wheelbase van; Ford’s contemporary extended wb Econoline used a plug on the back of the standard wb model, a la the later Maxivan, but this wasn’t great from a stability standpoint. were seen as better drivers and cargo & people carriers.
Although Ford was three years earlier to market with their 2nd generation van, as noted above, they squibbed the kick. The engine was pushed out, but just a bit, and when Dodge’s 2nd generation came out in ’71, it represented a truly advanced package design, finally making a sizeable dent in engine intrusion – and as part of a very clean and attractive design.
Both gens were seen as better drivers and cargo & people carriers than their Ford an GM counterparts, with decent driving dynamics, and Chrysler seemed to have a friendlier approach to not only the RV industry but also a wide variety of upfitters, from Bell Telephone – the had a dedicated mini plant for those – to ambulance builders to trade fitters, gaining incremental customers in the bargain.
Somebody, I don’t know who cleary drove this winning approach, which you could sum up as superior design, execution, and passion.
As to the Dodge vans popularity, Bell Telephone had fleets of them in my area, and they were very popular with tradesmen, hence the Dodge Tradesman.
Exactly on point regarding Bell Telephone, they were everywhere here in New England.
Yep, I recall the greenish and white paints heme.
Back in the late 80’s those Bell Telephone vans had a whole second life in the antique\flea market\swap meet circuit. The higher class ones got a white paint job and spray paint stencil lettering. You could still see the adhesive outline of the bell under the paint. Some people just said “screw it” and left the paint as it was and rolled with it. I bought many a 3 for a dollar Hot Wheels from those fine folks.
I continued to see lots of old vans (Dodge and otherwise, Chevrolet seemed to be the most common) with obvious Bell logos under the paint even after the Bell System was broken up. My area had Bell Atlantic as the landline phone provider and they used the same logo. What was really interesting though is that after they merged with GTE to become Verizon, they still used the Bell logo on Verizon vans, even though they had abandoned that symbol everywhere else. Verizon didn’t want an image as the stodgy old “phone company” so they didn’t use the old Bell logo. But when they wanted to double-park their vans and not get ticketed, looking like a utility truck for a phone company out to restore telephone service worked to their advantage. Thus, Bell logos on Verizon vans.
In 1972 our family, consisting of Mom & Dad, 4 very full sized teenagers (and various invited friends), did a lot of road trips all across the country.
By this year Mom’s beloved “Suburban Status Symbol”, her 1966 Ford Country Sedan station wagon, was getting tight inside for all of us and our luggage.
Without “consulting” with Mom, Dad traded off the wagon on a new Dodge Royal Sportsman long wheelbase van.
It served us well for our vacation road trips, plenty of chair height seating and storage space for anything we needed, but otherwise “That Bus” (Mom’s less-than-affectionate nickname for the van) sat in the driveway for long periods of time.
Mom was NOT at all amused by loosing her pride and joy station wagon.
I suspect that this was the beginning of the “Women’s Liberation” movement in our very traditional, conservative Southern Baptist household.
Poor ol’ Dad had no idea of the shiotestorm that an enraged, passive-aggressive wife could let loose on him! It cost him (in rapid succession) a Chrysler Newport Royale sedan, Chrysler Cordoba and, finally, a Mercedes-Benz coupe to mollify my insulted Mother.
Hell hath no fury like that of a suburban housewife!
From the 4th and 5th picture in the article it looks like sitting on the roof of your van playing guitar was a very popular thing to do in the 70s. My question is were the roofs of Dodge vans reinforced in some way? I dont think you could sit on the roof of any modern vehicle without causing serious damage.
I’m not a huge guy, but I stood on the roof of my Ford Areostar on a number of occasions without any problem.
I seem to recall the Ford’s were much more popular with the RV type conversion van manufacturers, due to the forward engine placement and ease if access to the rear.
I came close to buying one in ‘82 or ‘83. I don’t recall even looking at Ford or Chevy (I don’t think anyone shopped for GMC vehicles for personal use in those days if you had a local Chevy store), but found a nicely equipped Dodge at the dealership in town. It was tucked in the back of the lot, and surprisingly the salesman gave me the keys to extricate it. Silver, slant six and 3 on the tree, which I wanted. But as I cranked the wheel to maneuver around a bunch of other vans, I realized that the lack of power steering was a non-starter. Ironically, I ended up with a two year old Datsun 720 pickup, which also didn’t have power steering and in 4wd form with slightly oversized tires, it was literally painful too, not just to park but also after driving an hour or so on a twisty mountain road. I had only (briefly) had one car without PS before that, so I wasn’t really spoiled, but Alfa’s and Scirocco’s early Civics were a far cry from a domestic van (slow and heavy steering) and a Japanese pickup (not so slow, but even heavier). I realize now that I’ve only had cars with PS since I replaced the Datsun with a Ranger. A ProMaster is starting to tempt me with its camping usefulness, not helped by Paul’s build.
In the 70’s, Dodge seemed to have a better handle on the consumer van market than GM or Ford did, the latter seemed to mostly concentrate on use for the trades.
As our author will recall, as long as you kept a spare ballast resistor (or two!) handy, a 318/360 or a slant six would run forever, and so would the various flavors of Chrysler transmissions. When Chrysler was on its game they built very good vehicles, and the vans were among them.
The colour combination on that van reminds me very much of the cola and banana chewy sweets that my youngest son loves. It’s not often I see a paint job and can actually taste the colours 😀
Best lookig vans ever, and good to know Chrysler had a winner.
Here’s one that went on vacation to Australia and never went back
I was four years old when we moved from Pennsylvania to Southeast suburban Denver in 1980, and at that time these vans were the transport of choice for groups of kids too numerous for a Caprice Estate but not enough to warrant a Blue Bird. The summer(s) before and/or after kindergarten I was enrolled at an ECE establishment—Early Childhood Education, not the Economic Commission for Europe—called The Willows Child Learning Center. The Willows had several of these Dodge vans, all interlinked by CB radio. And we kids rode many miles in those vans, for field trips figured heavily in the curriculum. We went to the Pepsi bottling plant, the Red Seal potato chip company, probably the zoo, and surely other places I don’t now recall. But I do recall details about the vans: the Highland Park Hummingbird starter motors (which I was already familiar with from some of my very earliest memories), sharing a lap belt with one or two other kids (which would make any safety expert throw up now, but back then it was viewed with a shrug as better than no belt at all), the way the opener/latch hardware at the bottom of the side windows would quickly grow loose and sloppy so the windows would flop closed over bumps big enough for inertia.
By and by and by, I went to Cherry Creek High School: very rich, very ritzy, and very large, with over 3,000 students. Smack in the centroid of the sprawling campus was “IA”, the Industrial Arts building which housed a large cafeteria, the photography classroom and darkroom, a couple of extra-large regular classrooms, a large metal shop, and a large auto shop.
And when I say “large”, I mean it. The auto shop had five or six double-width overhead doors, at least two hydraulic four-point vehicle lifts, an alignment-style drive-on hoist (don’t recall if it was actually an alignment table), compressed air throughout, a brake lathe, a sandblaster, a big multi-oscilliscope engine analyzer, an outside vehicle “impound” yard, and a tool room very well equipped with high-quality hand and power tools, testing and diagnostic equipment, and parts and service manuals. All built and equipped in the early or mid ’70s when metal shop and auto shop were still very much a thing. Trawling through old yearbooks revealed that the shop teacher, Dale Schultz, was also installed about that same time.
As CCHS was a public school, the student body weren’t exclusively grossly overprivileged 1% types (money and daddy bought them a new Audi or Bimmer for their 16th birthday and then another when they crashed the first one, etc) but those types made up a large chunk of it, and those shops were just about the only respite from them.
The vehicular population in the auto shop included a new-never-sold ’86 Dodge B-van that had fallen off the train en route to the dealer.
Now, one of the physics teachers, an American with the French name of Brosseau was an insufferably self-impressed wannabe Brit replete with all the affectations, who fancied himself an ace race driver and god’s gift to females of all ages—including the girls in his classes, towards whom he behaved very badly that I saw (and I’m not surprised if much worse when nobody was around to see). He was frequently in the impound yard stealing parts off the traindropped ’86 B-van to use on his own ’77.
My last year at CCHS the auto and metal shops were officially decommissioned. I’d been pestering Mr. Schultz to let me have the (new, heavy-duty) starter off that ’86 van; he stalled and stalled, but on the last day of school he said “that asshole Mr. Brosseau said he wants the starter off that van; if you can go get it and make it disappear in the next 20 minutes, you can have it.” I dove into the van, yanked the starter off the 318, and into my backpack it went; I understand Mr. Brosseau was very put out about the whole thing upon finding the starter had gone missing. »tsk« Oh dear, how teddibly uneconomic! What a pity! I do hope he wrote to The Times imeedjitly.
Daniel. Enjoyed reading your memories of the IA building and Mr Shultz at CCHS
Class of ‘82 here. Spent most of my off time in that building. In the metal shop doing projects for Mr Shultz, don’t know if he ever got it on line but we built a cabinet for a plating tank, remember the sound of a running Grinding wheel trying to level the top of a section of old train rail he wanted to use as an anvil.
Shultz wasn’t the auto shop teacher when I was there but remember that near the end the IA building as we remember working both shops. Really liked him one of the few teachers I remember by name.
cc effect? i picked up my van from the welder today and saw this beautiful dodge parked in the shed. he said it’s a ’74. i assume the grill came from a later van.
Love the stained glass marker light. Nice detail that was well executed.
Custom replacement grill.
Here’s a shot of our ’72 Dodge on the day it was being picked up by its new owner, circa 1981. Great memories during the three years that we owned it.
Oh, hey, and also—whoever digs custom vans really ought to have Van People: The Great American Rainbow Boogie (published 1977, now out of print). My copy cost less than that. I’m not saying it’s not worth the money, just that I’d imagine with patience and persistence it can still be scrounged up without cratering one’s wallet.
I didn’t know Dodge vans were #1 in the 1970’s – I assumed it was the Ford Econoline. Back in 2003, the last year the Dodge Van was on the market, I would always noticed how it retained the 1971 front doors – reminded me of a ‘71 Charger’s back window.
My dad had a ‘69 Ford Econoline as a company car (he was a Civil Engineer), it only had two seats with a metal folding chair behind the “dog house” providing a center seat, not exactly the safest place to be!
“Another bench seat could be had here [in the cargo area], but that left very little room for cargo.”
BINGO–this was a crucial factor in why my church (& undoubtedly many others as well) upgraded from one of these to a cutaway bus back in 2006. Ours (a ’97-’02 Econoline 450 based on the front end & still in use to this day) seats up to 21 passengers and STILL has ample space for luggage & other small cargo thanks to having wall-mounted luggage racks above the seats. You’d be lucky to fit even ONE suitcase with all 15 seats occupied in the old Dodge 🙂 ! Just 4 years ago almost to the day I took this picture of the bus with my ’96 Aerostar (they were BOTH white!). Sigh… 🙁
I also took a side view to show the church name (if it’s hard to make out, it’s Leesville United Methodist Church):
There really is some type of undeniable cool about a 1970s Dodge Van. How many of you have seen a Plymouth Voyager Van from the same era? I think I’ve only seen a picture in a book about ’70s cars–never one in the metal.
I’d like one like this–
Everything about this van is the late 1970s and I love it so much
Thank you, Paul