2014 Showvans Calendar and 50th Anniversary signs

The 2014 Showvans calendar is a done deal. They made their first appearance at the NEVC Truckin for Tots event in Greenwich Rhode Island on the weekend. But you can still order them here :  http://www.vannin.com/showvans/calendar/index.html    The calendar proceeds go to help promote vanning across North America. Used some of it this past weekend to help out with the vanner display at the Mooneyes Xmas Show in Irwindale California.

To help celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Chevy Gvan and the Dodge A100 I had these tin signs done up. Proceeds from these signs will be going to help promote some of the evants directly related to early vans in 2014 and one of the signs was donated to the raffle for the Truckin for Toys event mentioned above. Details on the signs on the same link as the calendars above.
 

 

2013 vanning season

It's tough to keep on top of everything with so much social media available to pontificate on :). We're well into the 2013 vanning season and I'm way over the hump of the events that I'll be attending this summer.
Vanfest 18 was another great time. It was another record breaking year with well over 400 vans and trucks through the gates and close to 200 vehicles in the show on Saturday !.

 Drove to Vanfest with Eric a.k.a MUD BOS and Steve a.k.a Ghostrider and his wife Carol. I had hoped to do some video but it rained all the way there but fortunately that was pretty much it for the weekend.

 Then had a few weeks to get ready for the big show, the 41st National Truck-In. Being in Ohio and having about 380 pre regs I knew this was going to be a big one. 660 vans passed through the gates making it the largest Nationals in the past 10 years. The weather was absolutely terrible until I got there on Wednesday at 8:00 pm. As usual it was action packed with so much to pack-in in a matter of days. One of the highlights was doing road shots with some of my buddies from far away. Here's a shot of Jr and Glenda in Procrastownation all the way from Florida. This amazing van won the Best in Show title at the Nationals on 4 occasions. Was great to see the van back out, Jr and Glenda always makes an effort to support van events regardless of where they are.  

The early lineup is now a yearly tradition at the Nationals as well. For the past many years Wookee has been the main man coordinating this event, rounding up the vans from the 4 corners of the fairgrounds and placing them in order. Unfortunately Wookee was unable to attend the Nats this year due to injury. So we needed to rely on many more people to make it happen and it all came together for the largest gathering of earlies at 53!

There was a show n shine open to the public on Saturday, admission was canned goods for the local food bank. Here are some of hte Dodges in that show lead by Deacon Blues.

Jeff and Cindy Lou from Colorado surprised everyone rolling through the gates with this gorgeous 1939 Ford panel. It caught the eye of the judges in the show as well winning Best of Show and the Flying Eagle award for best van or panel first time shown at Nationals. The Legend of the Phoenix also from Colorado parked right behind the panel took some top awards as well.  

 There have been a number of vans customized on television reality shows. Most have been done quite nice mixing old school with new school touches that haven't always appealed to all vanners out there. These days old school is in and the Count and his cronies ran old school on this gorgeous Dodge on the most recent episode of Counting Cars on the History Channel that ran last night.  

One week from now Kurk and many of his vanners friends will be at Carlisle for the All Truck Nationals. This is the second year doing this, I was fortunate to attend last year's. Kurk has done some great stuff to get vanning back into the spotlight by getting vanners to participate in the Carlisle show as wel as in the Motorama indoor shows in the winter. Look forward to seeing the pictures from there that my partner in crime Superbeast will be taking.

2013 warming up to be another great year in Vanning

It's been a while between posts here but with Facebook, Showvans.com, Vannin.com and Instagram the word is getting out there. Back in March Steve and I got Ghostrider in the Megaspeed car show here in Toronto. We met a number of vanners/van owners there some for the first time. The van got a lot of attention but surprisingly not even a participation ribbon :(. Oh well same thing happened last year with MUD BOS.

Got word a while back from Scott that AACA had wanted his van Emerald Express for a display. The kicker being that they would need it from May 17 to Oct 13. Scott passed not wanting to be without his van all summer. Fortunately we were able to get Phil and Wendy to agree to put Nautique in the display. The showboard was an ad-van-ture that I took on. Dirty Donny was kind enough to let us use some of his art on the showboard  This also made me delve a bit into the history of custom vans and that was a very good thing. I connected with one of the original members of Associated vans in California. Their club was formed way back in 1966 ! I'm hoping to see Beebe and some of their other members at the event following. Joe Madonia also supplied some images from the past from his vast collection. Will be doing something with Joe to showcase his Vanning Museum soon.

The Mooneyes 2012 Xmas show was the first time vans were officially invited. Although the Vandoleros had been going for a few years. The turnout of vans was very good and vanners/van owners were there from near and far. The word is vans are welcomed back in 2013. There may be limitations on vehicles this year, will keep on top of that. I'm hoping the turnout can be even bigger and better in 2013 and will be using funds from the 2014 Showvans calendar to help with that.  

Vanfest 2013 is just weeks away now, looking forward to that.