Big families have always required big transport. Back in the ’60s and early ’70s, it was the Holden and Ford station wagons that filled the bill, comfortably fitting three across the front bench seat and four kids across the back. If push came to shove in a literal sense, a couple more could sit in the back storage area. With the advent of compulsory seat-belt wearing for all occupants and cars shrinking in size, families moved into commercial vans that had been repurposed with several rows of seats. The bigger the family, the bigger the van. Most of these were utilitarian but they did the job, if not with good grace, their rubber floor mats and upright seats remaining resolutely commercial in character.
This era also coincided with the panel van craze. Van customisers and enthusiasts from all walks of life would buy cheap CF Bedford or Transit vans and fit them out with exotic furnishings, giving them a nickname and a reputation that was mostly hearsay and possibly undeserved. More often than not, the so-called shaggin’ wagons were rolling pieces of art, actual vehicles of self-expression, as can be attested by the tens of thousands that visited van shows around the country. The van craze probably started with the hippie generation and the VW Kombi, but it hit its short stride in the late ’70s, peaking in the ’80s.
The big automotive manufacturers, always one step behind pop culture, took note of it and started to build vehicles
