The Ultimate Truck-Van: UltruVan

Divnick designed and built the first prototype Pickup-Van combination, now a standard in the RV industry as 5th-wheel tow vehicles. It was featured in Van, Pickup & Off Road World Magazine in May of 1979. On a trip from California to Michigan later that year, a highway patrolman stopped Divnick with red lights flashing just to see the vehicle close up that he had seen in the magazine.

As a school teacher, Divnick wanted a pick up. But he also wanted a van to haul his young family "inside". Since there wasn't any vehicle like that on the market, he decided to build one from two 1970 Ford vans.

The idea he could do such a thing was in his genes. As a child, he helped his Dad turn a Cadillac into a pickup. This picture is of Steve Divnick as a little boy, standing next to his Dad's "Caddy-up" in 1957.

The younger Divnick had not done any body-work since being an assistant for his Dad all those years before, so building the UltruVan on his own was a learning process. It took the young teacher about 300 total hours over a two-year period after school and on weekends. What he learned about body-work and fiberglass from that project was later applied to the development of the Spiral Wishing Well.

If you imagine a hood on this vehicle, it is about the same length as a regular full-size pick up. It has a full-size 8' box, but without the wasted space for a hood, the inside of the "pick up" is much larger than a normal crew-cab design.

Divnick still has the UltruVan in storage.

This page takes the reader through the process of the building phase. The "click to enlarge" pictures below open in a separate browser window.

The primary vehicle was a 1970 1-Ton Ford Econoline Club Wagon.
The first cut was just in front of the back corners. That section would be re-used as the rear of the soon-to-be shorter van portion. The next cut was just behind the rear side-door...all the way through the floor and frame.
The new pick-up box was made from another van that had been a roll-over total loss. Fortunately, the heavily damaged top portion would not be used.
The top was cut off of this section, leaving a full-size 8' long box.
This picture shows the two sections being prepared to connect. The frame was butt-welded with reinforcing structural gussets, and the sides were welded together using an overlapping brazing process.
Now drivable, this picture shows the rear door-section that was cut off the primary van, now moved forward and welded to the rear of the shortened van section. Notice the small side-door on the front of the box. That was very handy for access to various loads. The drive line, brake lines, and all of the other mechanical systems were lengthened to fit the new wheel base. Pictured is Divnick's daughter (and constant body-work assistant!) and her mother.
Blending the roof from the rear door-section into the roof of the front section required a series of slits and shaping to match the varying contours. You can see the sheet metal screws that were used to hold the overlapping metal together while it was brazed. The screws were later ground off, smoothed out, and blended into the custom body.
Body filler was used to blend in the joints and fill the dents that were in the two original vans. Unlike normal pick-ups, the Ultruvan box was not separate from the cab. It was one flowing body on the side shown in this picture, while the other side had the small half-door.
When it was finished, the rear doors of the cab could be opened or easily removed which was very handy for extra long loads. Divnick planned to build a slide-in camper with a "walk-through" between the van and camper, but other projects and a move across the country got in the way of finishing that project.
The interior has a fold-down couch and two captains chairs that can rotate around, and a dinette table that fits in the middle.
When the couch is laid down and the captain chairs turned around, the table fits between the chairs, and with a cushion on the table, the combined surface is as wide as a king-size bed!
This picture shows Steve Divnick (circa 1981) with his UltruVan and a Slick-50 dry-demo engine.
The Ford Econoline Van was chosen because the body lines matched the hinges on the doors, allowing a natural top-line for the box. The top-hinge on other models was too high.

About the company...