Herb Ringer liked Ford vehicles. He traveled the country from the 40s through the 80s, initially with his parents Joseph and Sadie, and then alone. And from the beginning, the family preferred Ford–from their ’45 Super Deluxe to the ’49 Woody Station Wagon, the 50’s trucks, and then in the mid-60’s, this beloved Ford Falcon Van.
The Falcon Van is the earliest form of what would become the Econoline series of vans, and the Falcons are often referred to as Econolines for that reason. Herb would later trade this van for an Econoline that lasted him decades. But there is something distinctive about those early vans, and particularly those with the distinctive turtle top pop-up roof.
Here’s a sampling of Herb’s photos of that ’65 Falcon Van…
HERB RINGER came West from his home in New Jersey in 1939. Camera in hand,
Herb captured the American West, from the Canadian Border to the Rio Grande and
from the Big Sur coast to the High Plains.
We believe Herb’s collection of Life in the West is one of the finest. His work has been
published in The Zephyr for 20 years. I am pleased finally, to offer Herb’s photographs
in color. We are also building a new ‘album’ of his work, elsewhere on this site.
My dear friend died on December 11, 1998…JS
For the Most Comprehensive Collection of Herb Ringer Photographs Online, Click Here to see the Herb Ringer Issue of the Zephyr.
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I’ve had friends that loved and collected ecolines, one guy put the van on a Bronco frame, but I had never seen one of these before…I’ve never even heard of these before…nice rig..
Great to see photographs from the mid-60’s when my parents generation was discovering the west. Also fascinating to see how we’ve come full circle, there are modern steroid enhanced vans running around the southwest that have to trace their roots back to the econolines, and VW’s of these years.