"Pre Cal Look" era VW Transporter...would you dare to build one these days?

[Zach Gomulka]

My point was that big & little tires on old hot rodded cars (VW or otherwise) haven't gone out of style since they were first tried. Other styling elements have come and gone, but bigs and littles are just as fundamental as a big motor.

I have seen the trend come back towards custom vans, some of the new builds are actually done tastefully. However I've yet to see one van that was built in a pure 70's style (orginal build or new) that ticks any of my boxes.

So maybe my comment was more hopeful than accurate

[hotrodsurplus]

My point was that big & little tires on old hot rodded cars (VW or otherwise) haven't gone out of style since they were first tried.

Oh yes they have. Anyone who remembers when low-profile tires came out in the mid '60s will tell you that you just weren't at all cool if you ran bigs-'n'-littles. That was '50s greaser stuff, man! You don't see very many cars with skinny tires in magazines for years. Guys like Bud Bryan, Pete Chapouris, Jim "Jake" Jacobs, and Peter Eastwood stood out in the early '70s by embracing skinny tires of yore. That's what made the cal-look thing such a big deal--they were running Pirelli when everything else went Polyglas. Those cars were the exception to the rule after a period of skinny-tire exile.

I have seen the trend come back towards custom vans, some of the new builds are actually done tastefully. 

Okay, there's no such thing as a tasteful custom van. You have to consider the intent of the original builders. Taste had no place in vanning. I mean this was the era of shirts that advertised mustache rides for a nickel. Vanning was about debauchery--you had your own boudoir on wheels after all. Get a girl in your van, light a joint, and cue Frampton Comes Alive and you were gonna get laid, dude. It was 100-percent excess and the van had to promote that image just as fast car have to promote the image of power.

I mean if this doesn't say it all I don't know what does:
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However I've yet to see one van that was built in a pure 70's style (orginal build or new) that ticks any of my boxes.

I can understand that it's not your bag. But you can't just make a blanket statement that it's dead. Hell, I hate disco and it came back too.

I think what we need to understand is the importance of variety. Right now there are two acceptable ways to build a bus: as a full restoration (yawn) and as some straight-axle thing that forbids you to change the rear wheels on the side of the road in less than three hours (yawn and ouch). It's not much of a stretch to think that they could come back big. I mean look at flake paint, Bellflower pipes, and Supreme wheels. 15 years ago that stuff was just goofy '60s crap and now it's super hot.

[Dyno-Don]

Forget Frampton Chris ; When it comes down to making out, whenever possible, put on side one of Led Zeppelin IV.

As for 70's style van, this is pretty damn close, maybe a little more back tire and a little more rake and it would be like the one I drove in High School and would do so again today


Then again this pretty much sums it up too

[hotrodsurplus]

Forget Frampton Chris ; When it comes down to making out, whenever possible, put on side one of Led Zeppelin IV.

Okay Damone. 

As for 70's style van, this is pretty damn close, maybe a little more back tire and a little more rake and it would be like the one I drove in High School and would do so again today

Yeah, but I wouldn't go hanging around any high schools nowadays. Yeah, tire and rake would do it. People are all uptight about gaposis but these things benefit from some quirky proportions.

Then again this pretty much sums it up too

Man, when that movie came out the first thing I did was go to Desert Surf (Las Vegas) and order a pair of checkerboard slip-ons. I still think they are the coolest things I ever owned.

[Dyno-Don]

Yeah, but I wouldn't go hanging around any high schools nowadays.

recently the wife and I were at a car show and there was this dude crusin around in a beat up Corvair van and my wife said "that guy looks like a Child Molester". We called him Chester the rest of the day.

[hotrodsurplus]

We called him Chester the rest of the day.

The old man that drove the school bus when I was in sixth grade was named Chester. No joke.

What happened to Jim? I think we I scared him away from his own thread. 

[Jim Ratto]

[Taste is a subjective thing,

Yep that's what keeps this hobby interesting. There's lots about the current "cool kid Cal Look rule book" I find as not all that cool, myself personally. But there must be a reason most everybody else does things the way they do. I don't like the tinsel look (accesories on top of accessories on top of acccessories), I don't care much for the "replace every bit of VW anything with something from the Jeg's Catalog" look either. Narrowed (excessively) beams look cartoonish to me. The really low Bus thing makes no sense to me. But the Bus I saw on the 118 struck a nice chord with me, simply because it had (and I have used this word before here) "presence." It was clean enough to look as if it had recently been either built, or at least freshend up and I liked that. It was way outside the norm of today, yet it was obviously loved by somebody (with enough balls to be different) enough to go thru the expense and hours to give this Bus its Presence. It pretty much looked like this Bus below, except it was like a Kalahari Beige with dark root beer brown roof. The slot mags suited it perfectly.

[El Dub]

Just a littleoff topic : i definitely think that Slot mags are the only way to go if you want to build a pre cal era bus or bug... The offset of those rims is just perfect for that look...

[modnrod]

Slot mags? Yep, I agree. I hated them when new, still do, even have a set of ugly 14" alloys with wide low profiles on the Superbug I have waiting..........but I still hate them, HAHAHA, so I won't be running them personally.

I just realised, not van-related though, a bit OT.
In my shed I have a deep heavy metalflake and shades of silver through gunmetal to black. I also have an old Japanese inline 4, ready for a few degrees extra rake and a few extra inches of arm length before I slam it, and I also have 4 open megs from Cone Engineering to build an exhaust. I have a large chrome rectangular headlight off Ebay coming for it too.

Just goes to show that age is no boundary whatsoever where bad taste is concerned! 

I refuse to like Disco though, ever..........