Anatomy of a Photo: Campagnolo Candy Van

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• You can keep the van, I much prefer the station wagon.

  But if I had to have a van, I'd have a lady, on a cliff, with a giant fucking laser gun, and she'd sort of be...protecting.

  http://www.michaeldowse.com/media/fubar_van.mov

• Sweet Merckx, that thing is A-W-E-S-O-M-E.  

  I personally vote for the peak of cool being the summer of '76 the Bicentennial Summer.

• If vans could talk, ....

• @Nate

  Sweet Merckx, that thing is A-W-E-S-O-M-E.

  I personally vote for the peak of cool being the summer of '76 the Bicentennial Summer.

  That would coincide with my birth, so technically the peak was late September 1976. Downhill from there.

• @Buck Rogers

  If vans could talk, ....

  The things that happened inside them would be a lot less interesting.

  @frank

  I'm just old enough to remember the Bicentennial.  Years later, when I was pounding nails and painting houses after college, I found a box of old T-shirts at my parents' house to use for work.  I found a white T-shirt that had a few letters on it, like this:

  UC

  ENT

  Parents explained they went to a 4th of July 1976 party thrown by some overly patriotic friends.  There was a set of these t-shirts, and when the wearers stood in the right order, the letters spelled out "FUCK THE BICENTENNIAL."  By the time the host figured this out, he was more than drunk enough to find it funny.

• I like/want everything plus this buckle, 1975 circa.

• I never saw this van at races in New England in the late 70s. Not that I was racing but I was at a lot of them. I would have remembered that beast. Maybe it was a west coast and race week in the midwest apparition. Either way it rules. I hope Campy headquarters liked what they were seeing in the USA back then.

  I'm pretty sure cool peaked a decade earlier.

• Sorry. The 1970s were a kidney stone of a decade. End of.

  That said, I've been mulling over the history of support vehicles for a little while, and the candy van (which I admit is rather cool) definitely deserves some consideration. My first car was a 1976 Ford Country Squire, which makes the Campagnolo Buick look like a SmartCar...

• @Gianni

  I'm pretty sure cool peaked a decade earlier.

  This.

• @TBONE Why do you keep bringing back Cheech Marin???