Summeriest comes to town
By JASON BLASCO
Lake County Leader
Rudy Borg began the first incarnation of his 1969 Dodge van when he purchased his vehicle from a Native American that utilized the van primarily to go to pow wows for $1,500 back in 1972.
Borg, who proudly displayed his van at Summerfest this past Saturday in Polson, estimates he has invested $7,000 just in the paint job alone during the three incarnations of the van.
Borg, a Missoula-native who made his living filling in as a local propane delivery driver, didn’t originally intend to showcase the van when he first got it in the early 70s.
“I’ve had the van since 1972 and it was considered a ‘hippy’ van back in the day when people had hippy vans,” Borg said. “When I first bought the van, it was all white with a decal of an elk and bear on it.”
Gradually, over time Borg began decking out the van, which is more famous for being a hippy van than its original purpose of being a commercial vehicle for tradesman such as plumbers and carpenters.
“I just wanted a van that I thought was practical for a place to sleep,” Borg said. “Back in the early 70s, that was all the rage to do that kind of stuff.”
Borg eventually began souping up his vehicle by adding LED light displays, to designer carpet to a multitude of horns. He even custom designed a hollow plastic sun roof, which he claims is unique to his vehicle.
“It just kind of evolved and I started adding stuff such as a sliding glass door, then a sliding sun roof,” Borg said. “None of the features on my vehicle are factory.”
For the last four years Borg has showed the vehicle after he was able to find a tattoo artist to completely refurbish the outside.
“(The Van) initially wasn’t up to show room because it had so much rust,” Borg said. “It took three door panels, a car hood, and donor panels to weld into before it could actually be repainted.”
Borg said he couldn’t even guess how many hours he has devoted to making his van showroom ready.
“It’s really hard to say (how many hours I have invested into it).” Borg said. “It’s been so many years. I’m working on it right now. I am kind of in a light phase and I am adding a lot of LEDs on it.”
Borg said his passion for cars and the restoration of them has been there since his childhood.
“I’ve always been pretty into them ever since I was kid,” Borg said. “When I was young, I didn’t have the means to do a lot of this stuff but now I have the means and the time.”
Borg estimates that he devotes 12 hours shining and buffing his car to get his vehicle “show ready.”
Borg’s vehicle, which gets 15 miles per gallon, holds 83 gallons of gas.
“It’s a dull weapon and its pushing a lot of air,” Borg said. “It’s on its third engine and not even the original speedometer so I have no idea how many miles but I estimate it has over 400,000 miles.”
KEEPING IT IN THE FAMILY
Mike Wall, a resident of Glascow, Mt., inherited his 1957 maroon Bel Aire from his mother in the early 1980s when he got the inspiration to transform the family heirloom into a decked out hot rod.
Though Wall significantly modified his car from its original factory settings, he maintained the integrity of the body by keeping the body close to its factory colors.
“I wanted a car that I could drive 200,000 miles safe and I made the rest of the car with auto parts that I could buy from any store,” Wall said.
Wall said he worked non-stop to make the transformation effortless.
“I practice what they call obsessive behavior,” Wall joked. “Completing this car took me to the winter of 2012, 2013 and I drove it from Montana to Arizona in 2014. There are over 28,000 individual parts. I had every part off when I took it apart and had every part (at one time) in a bag.”
The car has endured his sisters, who ran into his dad’s boat with the car and went to parties with it. The fenders and frame were banged up when Wall inherited it.
Wall estimates he has invested $65,000 into his vehicle and had he not inherited the car, the restoration would have totaled over $100,000.
“The car was given to me and the labor was free,” Wall said.