Junykard Find: 1972 GMC Vandura, Pacific Telephone Edition
If you were cruising American roads during the late 1960s through middle 1980s, you saw them everywhere: Bell System vans in their unmistakable white/green livery. Those trucks are nearly extinct today, so I was pleased to find this ex-phone-company Vandura at a self-service car graveyard near the Tesla Factory in Northern California.
The Bell System subsidiaries all over the country ran cargo and passenger vans made by Ford, Chrysler and GM, so there were Econolines, Club Wagons, Tradesmen, Sportsmen, Voyagers, Sportvans, Chevy Vans, Rallies and Vanduras working for Southern Bell, New Jersey Bell, Illinois Bell and so on.
The design that went on those vans beginning in 1969 was created by Saul Bass, best known for his work doing movie titles. It uses dirt-hiding gray-green paint for the bottom half of the body and cool-in-hot-sun white paint on top. The blue and ocher stripes are reflective, for safety.
After the breakup of the Bell System in 1984, these vans underwent gradual rebranding. All along, worn-out ones were auctioned off and went into private hands; well into the 1990s, you'd see former Ma Bell vans with various levels of logo removal. This video about the rescue of one such van is well worth watching.
The giveaway of a van's ex-phone company provenance was the remnants of the blue and ocher reflective paint, which was difficult to cover up completely.
I came of driving age in Pacific Telephone territory, and this van would have been a decade old when I first braved the Nimitz Freeway (State Route 17 then, now Interstate 880).
The General built these G-Series vans in essentially the same form from the 1971 through 1996 model years. GMC badged the passenger version as the Rally, while the cargo version was the Vandura. Differences between same-year GMC and Chevrolet G-vans are minimal.
Some junkyard shopper has extracted the engine, which probably wasn't original equipment anyway. The build sticker says the contented workers at Lordstown Assembly bolted in a 250-cube straight-six in the beginning.
The transmission was a three-speed manual, because Ma Bell wasn't inclined to waste money on frivolity such as automatic transmissions. If you were able to climb a telephone pole during an earthquake, you had to be able to work a clutch as well.
The shift lever is missing, but this was a good old three-on-the-tree rig.
There's no air conditioning, of course. If you like simple vehicle climate controls, this is your van.
After its phone company career ended, it got some cheap "wood" paneling inside.
When vehicles rust in this part of the world, they tend to do so from the top down. Northern California has rainy winters and dry, smoggy summers, so weatherstripping tends to fail and then water seeps in and does its work.
The area around the sliding door upper track is especially rotten. I think this van sat immobile for decades in a yard or driveway, slowly decaying around the roof.
Somebody tried to patch one of the more annoying leaks with... linoleum adhesive? Plumbing putty? It didn't work.
The remnants of its Pacific Telephone career can be found here and there. PASSENGERS EXPRESSLY FORBIDDEN, so there was (supposed to be) no picking up of comely hitchhikers on Blacow Road in 1974.
Wire blocks were kept by the rear doors.
11 years later, the Vandura hadn't changed much.
Why even bother with a Tradesman or Econoline?
1972 GMC Vandura Pacific Telephone van in East Bay junkyard.
1972 GMC Vandura Pacific Telephone van in East Bay junkyard.
1972 GMC Vandura Pacific Telephone van in East Bay junkyard.
1972 GMC Vandura Pacific Telephone van in East Bay junkyard.
1972 GMC Vandura Pacific Telephone van in East Bay junkyard.
1972 GMC Vandura Pacific Telephone van in East Bay junkyard.
1972 GMC Vandura Pacific Telephone van in East Bay junkyard.
1972 GMC Vandura Pacific Telephone van in East Bay junkyard.
1972 GMC Vandura Pacific Telephone van in East Bay junkyard.
1972 GMC Vandura Pacific Telephone van in East Bay junkyard.
1972 GMC Vandura Pacific Telephone van in East Bay junkyard.
1972 GMC Vandura Pacific Telephone van in East Bay junkyard.
1972 GMC Vandura Pacific Telephone van in East Bay junkyard.
1972 GMC Vandura Pacific Telephone van in East Bay junkyard.
1972 GMC Vandura Pacific Telephone van in East Bay junkyard.
1972 GMC Vandura Pacific Telephone van in East Bay junkyard.
1972 GMC Vandura Pacific Telephone van in East Bay junkyard.
1972 GMC Vandura Pacific Telephone van in East Bay junkyard.
1972 GMC Vandura Pacific Telephone van in East Bay junkyard.
1972 GMC Vandura Pacific Telephone van in East Bay junkyard.
1972 GMC Vandura Pacific Telephone van in East Bay junkyard.
1972 GMC Vandura Pacific Telephone van in East Bay junkyard.
1972 GMC Vandura Pacific Telephone van in East Bay junkyard.
[Images: The Author]
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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, Hagerty and The Truth About Cars.
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I had almost forgotten about floor-mounted high beam switches. Fords of that era had them, too, making rust and salt a factor in whether the lights would work properly.
I was in the telephone office in the Navy in 1972, and Pac Bell installers lusted after these. Many were still driving the old cab-over Ford Econolines with their infamous ’’freeway speed wobble’’ at 45 MPH.