Junkyard Find: 1972 Ford Econoline 300 Camper Van

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

After yesterday’s 1972 Mercury Junkyard Find, it makes sense— in some circles— to stick with model-year 1972 vehicles this week. With that in mind, here’s a very biohazardous second-gen Ford Econoline that I braved without benefit of a space suit. I’m pretty sure I didn’t catch hantavirus, scabies, or dioxin poisoning, but it’s still too early to know for sure.

This is the big, industrial-strength one-ton version of the early front-engined Econoline.

Built in Long Beach by the now-long-defunct (as far as I know) Sierra Vans.

The 1998 newspapers indicate a van that sat for quite a while.

However, the 2005 calendar on the stove might mean more recent habitation. Perhaps the newspapers were serving as insulation. It’s a shame to see a perfectly good propane stove go to waste— a little scrubbing and it will be 19% less disgusting than it is now!

RVs in junkyards manage to combine lots of sharp edges with the smell of human feces. Yucko! Since this is in California, chances are that dozens of black widows (and maybe a rattlesnake or two) await as well. Normally I’d stay far away from this thing, but journalists have to face danger now and then.

In 1980, Ford stuck millions of these decals on the dashes of automatic-transmission-equipped vehicles, in hopes of warding off future lawsuits in the infamous “park-to-reverse” fiasco. If they’d been made to recall all the affected vehicles, it would have involved at least 23 million cars and trucks.









Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

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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  • Superdessucke Superdessucke on Dec 03, 2014

    I bet if I dig deep enough, I can find a 2005 mortgage on this thing for $90,000. It is now in foreclosure, needless to say.

    • Firestorm 500 Firestorm 500 on Dec 03, 2014

      It looks like it has already been through a couple of tornadoes, and God knows what else. Might have been a storm chasers' van at one time.

  • Bickel84 Bickel84 on Dec 03, 2014

    Hmm, wonder how all that graffiti got on there? Maybe it was abandoned somewhere?

  • Cprescott Fisker is another brand that Heir Yutz has killed.
  • Dwford Every country is allowed to have trade restrictions except the US.
  • 1995 SC Are there any mitigation systems that would have prevented this though? We had a ship hit a bridge in Jacksonville a few years back and it was basically dumb luck it didn't collapse. This looked like a direct hit.
  • Cprescott Oh, well.
  • 28-Cars-Later "The Chinese Ministry of Commerce claimed the Inflation Reduction Act is “discriminatory”"This what your mainstream social communism has wrought: a foreign power, major geopolitical rival and the #1 global industrial competitor cries "racism" when an act of Congress in any way presents a challenge - and the saddest part is there are Americans who will process this claim and agree if only in their own minds. To be clear, Wo xihuan Zhongguoren but the under 40yo PRC raised Mainlanders I've interacted with do believe they are a master race - but that's fine right?
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