Legendary minivan designer creates amazing off-highway model of venerable household hauler, only to have the plan torpedoed by jealous Jeep sellers. That’s it, that’s the pitch. A aggravating story for the ages, if you like vans and off-highway journey. As initial noted at The Push, a single-time Chrysler-employed designer Michael Santoro dreamt up a Dodge Caravan that could probably have improved the encounter of automobile earning, back in the mid-1990s.

Santoro experienced by now penciled prototypes for outlandish Caravan designs when he brought he his bosses a new strategy. What if a Caravan,but rugged? You could make use of the innards for camp goodies, like a VW Vanagon, he may possibly have claimed. The Chrysler brass ended up stoked. The cherished it. Let us do it, they claimed.

But when Jeep sellers bought wind, they feared men and women would rush to the vastly much more simple Caravan and Jeep income would plummet. They have been possibly correct, but they deprived us of a courageous new earth of outdoor-ified output vans long extended right before #vanlife, or hashtags, or social media, have been on anybody’s mind.

You can go through more at The Drive, or Santoro’s personalized site, in which the tale and shots first appeared.