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. 

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