Junkyard Find: 1979 Dodge B200 Landmark Van Conversion
Are you a member of the Brown Car Appreciation Society? A fan of the Malaise Era and maybe bad music of the late 1970s? If so, then today’s Junkyard Find is for you! I spotted this brown-on-brown-on-brown van conversion at my local self-serve wrecking yard a full year ago, and I’ve been waiting for just the right time to share it with you!
This is a second-generation Tradesman, turned into a luxury crypto-RV by the (apparently) defunct Landmark Vans company, which must have been based somewhere in the Midwest.
It’s pretty well beat-up by now, but you can still catch the sense of luxury that must have prevailed in this interior, when Ace Frehley’s greatest hit was coming from the 8-track.
Can you get browner than this? Nope.
There’s some rust, sure, but nothing serious (at first glance).
These conversion vans weren’t aimed at the demographic that built matching bongs for their chopped-and-pinstriped Econolines and A100s; most of these vehicles were purchased by big families for road trips.
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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Hey! That's my old van! The one I lived in... ...down by the river! What the world needs now is a conversion Dajiban!
Growing up I saw a lot of conversion vans, my best friend's family had one as did all of his extended family. I thought I'd seen it all until I helped load groceries into a conversion Suburban. Seeing all that tucked velvet and a dozen oak cupholders in a Suburban changed my world.