Rebuilding Showvans.com

Tearing the site down and rebuilding it from scratch. Instead of blowing money on hosting I approached Astro over at Vannin.com and asked if we could have Showvans over on the vannin.com server again. We had it there originally but it grew  too fast at a time when bandwith was charged at a major premium.

It's a bunch of work to have the site but it is a tremendous showcase for custom vans at a time where we have the opportunity to shine with a bunch of big events in 2010 and even more so in 2011 with the 2011 CofC in California.  It's also at a time where our media connections are ata n all time high with the magazines both national and regional.  Glenn from Drop Jaw is planning on being at Vanfest and will be at the Nationals. Last year we managed to get web exclusive coverage on Truckinweb.com for both of those events. I'll be submitting coverage again this year and hope to do even better things with them next year on their own turf and at the 2011 Nationals.

I wish I could show the pictures of the 3 vans I am following that are currently being built and or totally rebuilt. 2 will be finished this summer, one hopefully next. These 3 vans are incredible and will show everyone that custom vans are extremely cool and worth a look. Also been told we'll have another newly built van making it's debut at Vanfest.

Although my main interest is in vans I also have a very strong interest in all cars and trucks.  It expands my horizons and opens me up to different ideas and helps expose people who would not usually be interested in vans to take a look at the other things I do. For the Detroit Autorama I collaborated with Myrideisme.com and helped them achieve their highest single day hit count with exclusive coverage of the Great 8 Ridler contenders. This little adventure pushed my photo abilities to the max and I'm happy to say that these were the best indoor pictures I've ever taken.  Last week the Gumball3000 Rally roared through town and I did another story for them on this event.  

   

I mentioned to Randy that I really think this $1.5 million Bugatti Veyron looks like Heavy Metal, :).

So plenty going on and it seems more crazy ideas floating through my head than ever. 

Detroit, Vanfest, Nationals and beyond

Detroit was a great time once again. In the end we managed to get 3 vanner vans in Autorama. It was very disappointing not having all 5 vans there especially Coop's Flying Eagle II as he was there anyway for the pinstriper's jam.  Before the event I mentioned that I would be going to Autorama on the myrideisme.com forum.  Craig got in touch with me about taking pictures for them, the end result was helping that website achieve their biggest day ever with exclusive Great 8 shots. At the time only Street Rodder Magazine had anything on the net from Autorama. A bunch of my Detroit pictures are headed to Drop Jaw Magazine for their website. 

Woody's Smokin Chop custom van at the 2010 Detroit Autorama

Karson's custom drag van at the 2010 Detroit Autorama

Ken's Shelby E-100 custom van at the 2010 Detroit Autorama


2010 will be another great year in vanning. My travels will be limited unfortunately, not sure if I will make any van events before Vanfest in June.  Vanfest 15 is going to be Kevin's last at the helm. So if ever I have been motivated to do something special it will be for this one. Have some ideas in mind. 
The Nationals will kind of be in my backyard, 6 hours away. I'm doing the website for this event and will be fairly involved with the Vannin.com Auction from there and likely take a couple of pictures for Truckin'. Not likely to see them at this one. 
Onward to 2011 and the Council of Councils in Buena Park California. This will be one heck of an opportunity to showcase vans in the mecca of car/truck culture. I've already been scheming on this one since I heard of the bid back in early 2009. Thanks to a bit of help from my friends, we also managed to convince everyone at this year's CofC in Wisconsin to do the van show on the Saturday afternoon of the event. This opens the doors very wide to get the non vanners and the media more involved in the show.  Plenty more info on this will be coming.

Also in the process of moving Showvans.com back over to Vannin.com so it could be a bit wonky for a while.

Time to relax, not quite

Vanning season is done now for me. The next big event will be the Detroit Autorama in February 2010. So once the 2010 calendars are all mailed out time to go whole hog on Detroit. I was asked yesterday for the use of one of my Nationals pictures possibly for the cover of another van calendar, that's a big honor for me which I gave two thumbs for and it's a sign of the mutual help vanners give one another. Although I live in Canada the vanner network I depend on to keep Showvans.com going and the calendar extends to the 4 corners of North America. With the funds from the calendar I've been fortunate to help promote van events in many far off places.  This will take on new proportions in 2011 if all goes well. 

Detroit was a blast. Arrived Thursday just in time to see the 5 vanner owned vans setting up. It was a great relief to see them all there safe and sound. The vans were very well received at what is one of the largest and most prestigious indoor custom car/truck shows there is. We had visitors in from all over to support the vanners as well and thanks to Deb and Gills we all went out Saturday night to a neat restaurant in Greektown. Here is a video of the highlight pictures:

Around the time this was all going on Truckin' suddenly had a renewed interst in custom vans. So we will likely see them at the 2009 National Truck-In in Pennsylvania and they have promised to run th e5 features that were shot almost 5 years ago in Michigan on Woody's Smokin Chop, Alpine Express, Californiacation, Sweet Emotion and Battlestar.
We had our Vanfest meeting yesterday and things are looking great for that event. We will be adding a cruise into St Thomas on Friday evening which will surely be a big hit.

Respect the van ...

Honda ran the first Respect the van ads a couple of years back. It looks like they are are ready for a new one as we were contacted once again for info by the film company doing it as we were for the original. While we see vans appearing in a number of television ads from Honda to Stride gum : http://ca.youtube.com/user/StrideChewingGum

For some bizarre reason we still cannot get the magazines to run regular coverage of van events or custom vans. That is not for the lack of trying either. However we do have our own homegrown magazine that appears about twice a year : http://www.vaninmag.com/ Leadfoot is putting together issue 5 will a likely publish date in time for Christmas.

The National Truck-In was another big success with close to 500 vans from the 4 corners of the U.S. The hosts MASVA said it was going to be like an old time van run and they kept their promise with events like burnouts and a vankhana. Unfortunately I was not able to attend but Superbeast and Brad were both there to supply many pictures for the Showtrux.com coverage. Below is one of the highlight pictures of the burnout competition with the winner of the best of show award Janine and her husband Monte who won Best of the Best award doing a tandem burnout.

Vanning season is far from over and we'll be seeing plenty more coverage of the events coming up on Showtrux.com

National Truck-In this weekend Altamont Illinois

The "Nationals" the largest custom van event of the year with around 500 custom vans is happening as I write this and I am not there, :(. So I thought I'd start this blog and help get vanning on the map a wee bit more. We've been flying beneath the radar for many years now since the 70's vanning fad went away.  But each and every year there is a bit of a buzz among the thousands of vanners still active when companies like Honda, Verizon, Bluenotes and Alltel have all used custom vans in their ads.  
The following pictures and video were taken in 2008 at van events in New York and Ontario Canada of vans from Vermont, Pennsylvania and Canada.

Vanning is alive and well in 2008, we're trying to spread the word. The national truck magazines
are very hard to convince that we are once again worthy of coverage.




Nautilus, radical chopped custom Dodge van from the 70's newly refurbished at Vanfest 2008



Alpine Express, winner of Best of Show 2007 Nationals


Tub Thumpin and Nautilus two of the most radicals vans from two different eras


Newly refreshed Visions, updated with late model lights and grille treatment at Lost 2008, N.Y