Down On The Mile High Street: 1966 Dodge A100 Sportsman
It just occurred to me that my own A100 Hell Project hasn’t been featured on Whatever I’m Calling The Series Of Photographs Of Old Street-Parked Vehicles These Days. It’s a total nightmare to drive in the snow (particularly for a snow-country n00b like me), but it looks pretty good with the white stuff.
I think a limited-slip differential and some snow tires would make this thing much a much more civilized winter driver, but Denver snow usually doesn’t stay around for long and I’m not all that motivated to drive my van on the ice (though a limited-slip would be fun for 318-powered smokey burnouts). Did I mention that I still haven’t gotten around to fixing the heater?
Right now I’m building up parts for a suspension rebuild and shopping around for an upholstery shop that will do the seats in the proper metalflake-red Naugahyde with gold piping. I’m also hoping to find some seriously sci-fi-looking 1970s speakers for the 8-track sound system; those Mandrill and Montrose tapes need to be heard!. When the warm weather arrives, this van needs to be ready!
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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Having owned a '68 Dodge window van (slant-6, auto) that I drove cross country in 1976, I can tell you that while shag would be "authentic", it's not a very good idea. I also had colorful curtains, and noticed my increased privacy was directly proportional to police interest. I was twice as likely to be pulled over with the curtains closed as with them open. I ended up painting over the side windows the same color as the exterior, and put roll-down shades on the back windows. I also put the middle bench seat back in for passengers, but hinged the seat back to fold flat into a better-than-nothing bed. In short, once you've done the mechanicals to your liking, you've got a lot of choices to make and work to do on the interior. Fortunately, the owner of every van I saw gave it his personal touch, so there's no one right way to make it authentic. BTW, bumper stickers involving politics and sexual innuendo were common in the '70s, but attracted the wrong kind of notice. I found you can't go wrong with Disneyland and AAA stickers.