She Gave Her Van a 1970s Overhaul, Shag Carpet Included
By A.J. Baime | Photographs by Natalie Behring for The Wall Street Journal April 15, 2023 10:00 am ET Soumaya Majout Bent, 35, who lives in Jackson Hole, Wyo., and Santa Barbara, Calif., and is a student planning on opening a restaurant in Santa Barbara, on her 1977 Dodge custom van, as told to A.J. Baime. It was the week of my wedding, and my fiancé and I were driving in Chicago. We saw this van parked on a lawn with a “for sale” sign. I was always mentioning how I wanted a van to go road tripping. I yelled, “Stop the car!” When we approached the van, I noticed two other people looking at it. I thought, I need this van in my life. So we called the owner right away. The following day—Aug. 5, 2022—he m
By
A.J. Baime | Photographs by Natalie Behring for The Wall Street Journal
Soumaya Majout Bent, 35, who lives in Jackson Hole, Wyo., and Santa Barbara, Calif., and is a student planning on opening a restaurant in Santa Barbara, on her 1977 Dodge custom van, as told to A.J. Baime.
It was the week of my wedding, and my fiancé and I were driving in Chicago. We saw this van parked on a lawn with a “for sale” sign. I was always mentioning how I wanted a van to go road tripping. I yelled, “Stop the car!” When we approached the van, I noticed two other people looking at it. I thought, I need this van in my life. So we called the owner right away. The following day—Aug. 5, 2022—he met us with this van. It had over 90,000 miles on it, and we bought it for $12K. The next day, my fiancé and I got married.
We shipped the van up to Jackson Hole. The outside had this great paint and pinstriping. It was a little beat-up, but I wanted to keep the patina. The van had a Waylon Jennings CD in the stereo, and a spare tire cover with a Waylon Jennings logo. We decided to leave the exterior pretty much as it was when we found it. But for the inside, I wanted to create something special.
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Subscribe NowI was inspired by the design of the van from “That ’70s Show.” There is a character on the show named Fez [played by Wilmer Valderrama ], which is also the name of a city in Morocco. I have a lot of family in Morocco and have been to Fez, so that’s what I named the van.
I spent four or five months looking for cool things for the interior. The right textile, the right lava lamp, the right shag rug. A disco ball, a leather table. Everything had to have a 1970s vibe. I found these things on , so it was all budget friendly. We had two moonlights [round windows] put into the sides of the van. We added an electrical system powered by a lithium battery. I travel with a 200-pound dog named Whiskey, and I needed air conditioning to keep him comfortable. So now we have two air-conditioning systems, one in front and one in the back.
I found a little VHS movie player and a TV, and I keep movies in the van like “South Park” and “Animal House.” I have an app on my phone that can control the AC and the lights and things. We also built in a sound system with 2,000 watts and 11 Focal speakers.
We finished the van just a day or two before the photos for this story were taken in early April. All in, it cost about $20K. Now we are ready to go road tripping. Next weekend, we are driving Fez from Jackson Hole to the Coachella music festival in southern California. I hope that the van interests people, so we can make friends along the way. Whiskey will ride in the back, where he will be nice and cool.
Write to A.J. Baime at [email protected].
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