March 1, 2003
Finally
got around to fixing up the Cruiser pictures ! Have consolidated
them now and added some detail pictures that I took last summer
at Vanfest.
The Cosmic Cruiser Story
They say a picture
is worth a thousand words, well the story behind the Cosmic Cruiser
would take a thousand pictures. It has been under construction
for 26 years now, gone through 3 major transformations and in
2001 will be on it's way to Croatia, the third continent on it's
incredible journey. Most vanners can only dream of building the
ultimate van, Ivan Benic dreams up the idea, then just does it.
His first version of the van was a show stopper and poster van,
version two went where few have treaded, tandems front and back,
version 3 extended the van to over 30 feet . . .
I first saw this wild creation at Van Canada in 1977, Ivan towed
it in on a trailer behind another van. A major crowd gathered
around it all weekend and Ivan told us his ideas of what he was
going to do with it, waterfalls out of the wheelwells was one
I remember ... The next time I saw it was at an ISCA show in
Ottawa, sure enough there were waterfalls, as well as a computerized
bar and the wildest wraparound mural of the time, done by Ivan
himself. It was no surprise when I saw the posters of it next
to Farrah's in the department stores in the late 70's.
Here's Ivan's own version of how this incredible van came to
be:
" The
idea in the beginning was just to build a van as I thought a
van should look. The original front end as shown the first year
was influenced by some people around me at the time. I decided
to change it first chance I got. In Chicago where the van was
first shown, it actually seemed to scare people so therefore
I felt it was way too wild. From that moment on I decided not
to let other people influence any of my designs. So I consider
the teeth as a mistake.When the mini van came out in 82 I thought
that it was a copy of the cruiser , naturally removing the wild
curves and rounded panels they got closer to the crap they were
producing at the time . The fist time I overheard someone tell
his wife that the Cruiser was a customized mini van I decided
to cut it up. On one of my trips to Virginia I lost three lugs
on the right rear and four on the left, it was at that time in
81 I decided that more wheels were necessary to improve on the
ride and safety. After the nationals in 82 I started to think
of a new van because the Chrysler mini was way to close to me.
Knowing how many man hours it would take to just chop a new one
and get it ready I knew that a completely new van was out of
the question. In the spring of 83 the van was gutted and in Sept.
of that year I welded in another front axle and built two fenders
and a hood , looked at that for awhile and than one afternoon
I decided to build the nose. I quit at 4 am and my workers found
me sleeping on a door panel in front of the van. The front end
was finished.The reason that it turned out the way it did was
that I was all alone to my thoughts , no sketches just a hammer
a roller and some sheet metal. Other than a headlight change
It is exactly the same as the day I first built it in 83. All
this was done and I still had no idea how the two front axles
were going to be linked. The idea for that came to me one night
when a friend was taking me home from a late night at the shop
(too tired to drive). The van then sat for the next year in the
back of my shop. About Oct 84 a promoter of a show offered me
some big money to bring it out for his show in Toronto. So I
got the money up front, got some more from my friendly banker
and the first show was in Toronto in the last week of Jan. The
next spring the Cruiser came out on the cover of Vans and Trucks
magazine which incidentally was the first mag that wrote a feature
about me 10 years before.The Windsor Star on their own put the
Cruiser on the front page and sent the article world wide ,I
received congratulatory mail from all over, the most interesting
one came the day I drove the van inside the shop to cut it up
for the stretch, it was addressed to Ivan Bench Cosmic Cruiser
Windsor Ont. Canada. It was written by a vanner from New Zealand
who didn't have my address. In some strange way all the hard
work was worth it at that moment. The stretch took about 6 months
because of its size we had to rebuild quit a bit. Rear floor
was sagging because the body support was just stock sheet metal
and the weight of the body was bending it at the sides of the
floor , the frame up front also had to be redesigned because
of the size. Since the stretch the Cruiser rides finally the
way i thought it should .At present I get about 10 MI per gal
at 70 and goes down from there.Over all I have only one regret
about the whole thing, I don't show it enough.The most interesting
deal I put together because of the van was an all expense paid
trip to Australia(10 Months). Of course there are more to come
I just have to get out more. Some of the featured city's where
the cruiser appeared Detroit, London, Toronto Montreal, Quebec
City, Edmonton,Calgary, Chicago, Pontiac, Columbus Ohio, Pittsburgh,
Erie, Niagara falls , New York city, Atlantic City, Washington,
Virginia beach, Raleigh NC. and a bunch in between. Many thanks
to Windsor van shop for version 1 interior, The Trim Shop for
version 3 interior and Cyber biker for version 2 interior."
Many
thanks to Ivan for the many emails to do this feature also to
his good buddy Carl (Cyberbiker) for many of the pictures.Check
out the other incredible work Ivan has done here: Ivanbenic.com
Photos from Ivan and Carl's website as well as from Virtual's
archives.