Car Stuff: Random Sighting #10

Commercial vehicles are everywhere, but they tend to blend into the background. Today's subject is a van I pass whenever I walk to the supermarket, but I never paid any attention to it until I started looking for old cars to photograph.

This GMC has become a billboard of sorts for inspections at an auto shop that backs up on the Stop & Shop. The "Rally Wagon" badge on the fender means that it was built for carrying people rather than cargo (the windows all around are also a tipoff) and as such it would have come with at least one bench seat behind the two front seats. It could have had as many as three benches, with a maximum passenger capacity of 12, but I never thought to look inside. This particular truck was probably a parts runner before being consigned to sign duty.

Oh look, from this view we can see two bench seats... By the way, this basic body style was manufactured for 26 model years, from 1971 to 1996, before finally being replaced with a new design (and in keeping with precedent, that basic design is still in production 18 model years later).

So just how old is this one? Well, trucks tend to get cosmetic changes even less frequently than cars, but we can at least narrow it down. One key clue is the round headlights: most cars and trucks had switched to rectangular headlights by the late 1970s. Sometimes base models retained round lights a few years longer (so your neighbors could tell how prosperous you were, or weren't). This combination of grille and round headlights puts this van from a '78 to an '80, and the numerous dents and the amount of body rust along the bottom edges support that.

From the absence of license plates, I don't think this van is roadworthy anymore (though all four tires appear to be fully inflated, or at least mostly). Let's put it this way: these photos were taken on three different days, and the van is always in the exact same spot.