And I digress...

Now enters a period of my life when I did not drive a subclassic but a 1979 Ford Econoline 250. And not only did I drive it, I worked out of it, ate in it and slept in it. I built a wall about two feet behind the seats to hold my wares back and provide a small cocoon like area for sleeping. I traveled from Pennsylvania to South Carolina to Wisconsin to South Texas peddling my low quality goods at all varieties of flea markets and swap meets. This went on for a couple of years.

This van served me very well. It could get about 13 mpg on the highway with no cargo traveling at 55 mph. That dropped to about 8 or 9 loaded and cruising at higher speeds. Not such a big deal at a time when gas was at times less than $1 a gallon.

Having that load on top set it a little off balance. The van could rock quite a bit on a stop and I would sometimes get nervous on sharp turns. I did once drive from Chicago to Evansville with 6 empty 55 gallon drums ties upright on top. I wish I had a picture of that.

I recently sold this van on ebay to someone who just needed the engine and junked the rest. I had it for about 10 years. Lately I had been using it for home improvement projects. Here is is parked behind my house.

1986 Dodge Omni Miss Liberty

If there is one car I wish I had better pictures of, it is this one. It was white with red and blue pin striping and a decal of the Statue of Liberty on the side. All from the factory that way. From what I understood, it was part of a fleet of Dodge Omnis that were driven in the parade commemorating the completion of the restoration of the Statue of Liberty. I paid $600 for it from a friend who owed more than that on it. This was about 1996 or so. The only work I really ever did on this was plugging up all the emissions hoses that I didn't understand. And this thing did fly. It has a strong 2.2 engine for as light as the car was and it was geared very broadly. Theoretically I figured that it could do 225 before redlining in 5th gear. Of course it could never do that, but it was geared that way.

I drove it out west and it started having carburetor problems in California. I don't know if I picked up some bad gas or what. But it never ran consistently well after that.

I still had the Rabbit while I was driving this car and sold them both about the same time. Now I had a 1979 Ford Econoline 250 cargo van and was heading out to live on the road, selling at flea markets.