Polish up those pocket protectors and fire up those plastic, battery-powered lightsabers, this is one cool van! This is a 1979 Dodge B200 Star Wars tribute van and it’s on Craigslist in Lago Vista, Texas, just northwest of the state capital of Austin. The seller is asking $6,000 for this super cool van. Thanks to Barn Finds reader, Jason, for tracking down such an out of this world ride!
\
If you owned this van you would immediately be given the highest honor from your local Star Wars chapter: a 21-gun salute with a BlasTech DL-44. The Dodge B200 van itself looks nice but the seller says that it has “some rust spots but nothing major”. I don’t see one speck or fleck of rust at all. With only two exterior photos, they mention for anyone interested in the van to search the internet for “Star Wars van”. But, Mother of Kwath, it seems incredibly odd to me that they wouldn’t even pull the van out and take photos of the other side. Here’s one photo of the back that I found on the internet search, and one of the driver’s side. You can see that the actually-pretty-cool headlight covers are now AWOL and there is no mention of them at all. The seller also mentions that some of the graphics are starting to peel, probably from the hot Texas sun and/or reentry or space debris. It’s wearing Ohio license plates, so maybe it was in a rust area for a few years? The true answer is somewhere out there in a galaxy far, far away.
Who in the name of the great prairie winds would even know how to operate that space-age instrument panel?! Wait, that’s just a standard 1979 Dodge Van dash with an tach added on top. The seller says that the interior “needs cleaned”, and by that of course, well, you know what they mean. There should be enough room in this van for the whole festooned bunch of role-playing kindred spirits for trips to those Trekkie conventions (kidding!). It even has a small refrigerator in the back that unfortunately has cooled its last diet Fresca, unless you add a bag of ice when you fill it with refreshments. I don’t want to go all base delta zero on the seller, but no engine photos, either? This mystery engine has been rebuilt but they don’t even say whether it’s a six or eight-cylinder! But, it does have a mere 2,500 miles on it, “about 1500 was one long trip I took to make sure it worked.” This van would be nice for a custom van fan and especially for a Star Wars collector. Do you think there’s enough info here to whip out your cosmic checkbook for this tribute van?
I’ll be honest was never much of a Star Wars fan, watched the first one but none after that, mainly because I hate sequels. If you have to search the internet for other photos of the van I would worry about being scammed. If a honest ad and you bought it most likely you would be the only one at the car cruise with one and oh the kiddies would be all over it.
Actually its probably more likely to attract dudes in their 40s than kids!
That’s fine, the dudes in their 40’s are far more likely to hang out and drink beer and chat about car stuff.
If this engine were rebuilt by a reputable engine rebuilding company, great. We all know what would have been involved in the rebuild. But, a “rebuild” by this guy’s brother-in-law? Even he doesn’t know what his brother-in-law did. All new internals with appropriate boring, turning, etc…or spark plugs pulled and cleaned?
“Brother in law” rebuild is probably a ring and bearing job at absolute best. But you never know, maybe his BIL was like my dad, a meticulous machinest incapable of doing it halfway.
So is this some kind of factory promotional tie in van, or were the graphics added later?
Huh…”The Force is strong with this van”.
How lazy is someone when they want you to use google to get the rest of the pictures.
Never saw a Star Wars themed van before. Not sure it would be my cup of tea. My dad had one of these Dodge B200 conversion vans when I was in my 30’s, we traveled alott in it, the van was our favorite mode of transportation when we went to NASCAR races or ball games or the beech . It rode very smoothly, and with the 318 V8, mileage wasn’t terrible either. We used it for years and even up hear in PA it never developed any rust. It was twice the van this new contraption Dodge calls a van today!
I think its kool,and it does look good in the pics.But for someone from another part of the country to consider buying this van ,more info is needed.Receipts on what was done to the motor would be nice,but I wouldn’t be surprised if there aren’t any.It doesn’t mean the motor wasn’t rebuilt,but when somthing as big as that is done to a vehicle ,you usually save the receipts.From what can be seen ,6K looks like a good deal.But then ya hafta pick it up or ship it home.Whats that gonna cost?Bottom line this guy needs to give up some more info and some more current pics of the parts of this van that he isn’t showing us.
In this van, be noticed you will.
Did nobody catch that it does not say STAR WARS, it says STAR VANRS?
Pretty cool, I’d rock it. Talk about the best vehicle to pile your buddies in for opening nights of new movies.
Also, seriously, what’s up with the first guy on this awesome van commenting that they haven’t seen any other starwars movies besides the first one because they hate sequels? Who does that? Those first three movies are great. The prequel movies are kinda garbage, but there’s some redeeming stuff in them, and the latest two movies pulled that whole hot mess out of the fire in a pretty big way.
It’s astounding to me how little overlap between automotive culture, particularly old car culture, and anything nerdy or reasonably modern can be sometimes.
No wonder there’s still ‘crying child’ dolls at car shows.
LOL, to be honest I completely missed that!
Sorry jaygryph if a difference of opinion bothers you but I have found most not all sequels don’t do justice to the original, examples the Rocky series, Smokie and the Bandit series, and then there’s the remakes like Gone in sixty seconds and Vanishing Point. This is just my honest opinion and if it bothers you just ignore my comment, that’s what I do as I try my best not to make abusive comments on anyone’s opinions as we all have one.
Just seems odd to me to watch the first part of a story, and not the three other parts. That’d be like watching the pilot episode of a TV series, and then going out of your way to avoid watching the rest of the actual series.
On the up side, man Game of Thrones, Star Trek, Firefly, etc would be a much shorter set of things to binge watch.
I’m not bothered by your difference of opinion. I just find it strange and alien to me. It’s fine, we can ignore each other. Mutual ignorance is far easier than mutual understanding.
For what it’s worth, cash grab sequels are typically awful, and that was far more rampant in hollywood in the 70’s and 80’s when there wasn’t such a vast alternative source of entertainment, such as we have now.
Which is not to say Direct to VHS isn’t still alive and well, sans the VHS tape. There have always and will always be terrible second movies made for no reason other than to rake in dollars. The Brave Little Toaster Goes To Mars comes to mind.
It just seems a bit indicative of the sort of mindset I see here with the car stuff of “this was the one and only greatest version of this (car/movie/song/brand) that will ever happen. Nothing after it can improve upon it in any way.”
Sure are a lot of folks out there who’d rather see some of the stuff on this site turned into Chinese steel water pipes and sold back to us rather than have the vehicle modified in a way they don’t particularly like, and put back on the road to be used as transport and for entertainment as they were designed to do.
For what it’s worth, you’re not the only one that isn’t keen on having the cherished films of their youth re-wrought for a new generation. We’ve all got our personal Ghost Busters and Blade Runner reboots to irk us.
But I mean, ya know, not all of that new stuff is bad. Give the original 3 Star Wars movies a watch, and I imagine you might even enjoy the two recent ones.
Or don’t. Up to you.
jaygryph I value everyone’s opinion whether I agree or not.
Some other examples I forgot, I’m a big fan of horror movies and they beat Freddie Krufer movies to death along with Michael Meyers and Jason. I’m not totally ignorant to new ones as the Freddie vs Jason is one of my favorites.
Now back to the Star Wars movies I did want to see Rogue One which I believe is the newest version but my grandson’s wanted to see Passengers which I didn’t think highly of.
I guess I’m old school and want to see more stunt men doing the stunts than computer animated stunts. Case closed as far as I’m concerned and I’ll keep quiet.
An exeption to the sequel movies has to be Terminator. Sequel was far better than first IMHO.
And Aliens…
Obviously, whoever produced the graphics package for this did not have legal permission to use copyrighted material – hence “Star Vanrs.” That ruins the appeal for me, at least, and makes anyone seen driving this look like a super-nerd. The imagery is close but I guess they figured not close enough to trigger a cease and desist letter from Lucasfilm’s lawyers.
That’s a cool van for 6 grand. It would be a hit at car shows. Dress up in your Darth Vader costume and scare all the kids.
-1 for no Dejerik table in the back
I want those wheels if someone buys it!!
Does it come with an 8-track tape of the “Cantina Song”?
this would be the perfect van to not get laid in
Yep probably don’t even need to wash the sheets, or call CSI.
Yeah, there’s probably enough DNA in that van to start your own Ancestry research that last for years.
I love chrome side pipes on just about any thing. Gives a vehicle a real hot rod look.