Rolling rumpus rooms and other van interiors of the National Truck-In
While the doghouse covers come off and show a few tarted-up small-block V-8s among the sea of six-cylinders between the front bucket seats, nobody really seems to care much about engines at a custom van show. After all, vans typically don’t go fast or hug corners like most hot rods and sports cars. Instead, some of the most stunning displays of creativity and craftsmanship become apparent only when the owners of the vans throw open their gullwing, Dutch, and barn doors for inspection.
If anything characterizes a custom van besides porthole windows, murals and mag wheels, it’s the van’s interior, as we learned this past weekend at the 42nd National Truck-In this past weekend at the Washington County Fairgrounds in Greenwich, New York. Not only did the interiors we see typically follow a specific and unique theme – we saw the gamut from “hunter’s cabin” to “pirate ship” to one based entirely on goats – they also displayed copious amounts of creativity and craftsmanship, all the while squeezing in a bed and other amenities for both style and comfort. Some of the interiors dated back to the 1970s, some represented the life’s work of the van’s original owner, while others were customized more recently. All of them showed a passion for vanning that has, to many, become a lifestyle.
We’ll explore that culture of custom vanning in a future article, but for now, let’s take a look at some of those custom interiors after the jump.
