By Peter Tanshanomi
You can count on Classic Captions to bring the retro. Today we risk overdosing on it, with a gale-force assault of ’70s cliches: multicolored tape stripes, porthole windows, white spoke wheels shod with Goodyear Polyglas tires, and that’s just the vehicle! To that, add such tastefully period touches such as the Honda XL dirtbike, a white cowl-neck knit top, wicker platform wedges, plus a director’s chair and a folding web lawn chair. Stare long enough and you can almost hear strains of England Dan and John Ford Coley emanating from an unseen cassette player. The only question is whether it’s a Sanyo or a Panasonic. If you can’t come up with a clever witticism in response to this, your creative juices have turned to powder inside you, like the blood of those victims in The Andromeda Strain. Or perhaps you’re just young enough to have no idea who England Dan and John Ford Coley are. Um…were.
Monkey10is gave us far-and-away the most popular response to the awkwardly over-saturated photo of last week’s ZAZ 968 Zaporozhets, with this pitch-perfect comment:
‘Born from zhets’. Oh wait…
In second place was Hooniverse’s Crumpet-&-Rainshowers Editor, Chris Haining, aka Rust-MyEnemy, offering this bit of rhyming whimsy:
I drive this car because I’m Ukranian.
I wear my hair like this to conceal my huge cranium.
And something about a dog.
The thread that followed is equally entertaining, but don’t go read it until after you’ve done your homework, which is turning the customization of this Ford Econoline into commentary gold.
Kamil Kaluski 
Robby DeGraff
Good job guys. You can hardly tell where it used to say Free Candy.
I like to mask off everything, that way there’s no overspray from ‘Free Candy’
Well that didn’t take the two of you long.
Great minds think alike.
Or, in my case, abnormal ones too.
I was worried I was the only one.
Not really a caption, but how anal-retentive are you if you apply two colors of tape stripes and then reinstall the emblems on top of them before starting on the third stripe?
They didn’t take them off. X-acto blade around the emblems.
Those are pin-on emblems. They take five seconds to remove. You’re saying this dolt would rather slice up his fingers and have the edges of the decals start peeling in about a year, plus have to deal with lining up the seams inside the C and the O’s than to do it right the first time. He deserves whatever diseases he catches in the back of that van.
http://i.ebayimg.com/00/s/NTgyWDk2MQ==/z/~H8AAOSwPe1UAS4v/$_3.JPG
You sound surprisingly passionate about this.
Nah, I just don’t have a good caption this week.
Decaf, dude. Just sayin’.
Cindy, at the back of the van lining up Jim’s work with the stripes, started thinking about paint colors in her head. The van was getting close to matching her outfit, but she was going to have to swing by the hardware store for a can of dark blue if she was going to be able to camouflage herself perfectly.
“I bet we could make some good money filming ourselves doing it in the van as it drives around. If only there were a way to easily distribute the movies.”
Cindy realized too late that Roger had sealed all the doors of the van with high-strength tape.
Roger realized too late that Cindy could still climb out the window and kick his ass.
Back up, a little more, a little more, almost there.
Now straighten the wheel or the line’s going to be crooked.
The Jensen family were convinced ‘Econoline’ meant inexpensive Pep Boys tape stripes
Hey, that was the way we rolled back then. I had a bold three-stripe scheme on my Ford Courier, along with a set of baby moons.
Peak ’80s for me was my dad painstakingly placing thin gold stripes down the side of his maroon ’84 Buick Century. Pinstripes: the vehicular cellphone cover of 1975 – 1995.
The dog is there because they were using him to make plaster foot prints of his paws to place along the sides of the van.
“Imma let you drive…right after I put on this tape”
Randy and his Fidelco guide dog were letting his friends customize his van before he sold it to Stevie Wonder.
Come on guys, and pay attention to the directions. There were two really obvious ways to do this van. STRIPPER, not STRIPER
The first A-Team van just didn’t have the same look as the later ones. Of course that was a limitation of Ford sponsorship. Also having BA(rk) Baracus being played by a dog just didn’t give them the ratings they expected.
The girls giggled and suggested it would be kinky to put stripes on the ‘sleeper van’ and the boys fell for it.
“Guys, I only stopped for fuel and a screenwash…”
“Hey, it’s all part of the service. Jake, get up off yer backside and fetch that waterbed. Lassie, go get the hose.”
We know Sammy Johns’ song “Chevy Van” but now’s there “Ford Ecolonine” performed by Nanci Griffith in 1986.
Also a reference in a Neil Young song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cXSUBs5tNQ
Lulu Hogg casually placed one foot on the bumper and one on Fritz’ leash as the captive Duke Boys and their cousins Daisy and Maisie were forced to spruce up her van. She knew how much the Duke Clan hated Fords; she also knew where the Gen’l Lee was hidden.
“Grin wider, boys!” she shouted, “Shine that Ford up good, don’t stray with them stripes, neither! You there, Daisy! Lean over just a bit more girly! Show Lulu what you got! You there, Maisie, I’m like to write you right out of this caption you don’t start grinnin’ more!”
Fritz licked his chops.
How to sum up the 70’s in one picture.
Do not touch the trim!
At the next party I get your keys.