Lost & Driven · Case 001
The California Van
A 1973 Dodge Tradesman, two-tone copper and white, last photographed leaving a swap meet in Pomona. Thirty-four years of silence.
Reference image · Not the actual vehicle
One photograph. One misspelled name. Thirty-four years without a trace.
It appeared in a single photograph published in the January 1992 issue of Custom Van Magazine — two-tone copper-and-white, side-pipe exhaust, full porthole package running the length of the cargo side. A full-length mural occupied the rear panel, subject matter unclear in the reproduction.
The caption named the owner as "Dan Kowalski" or possibly "Dan Kawalski" — the typesetting was unclear and no correction appeared in subsequent issues. The vehicle was photographed leaving the Pomona Fairplex swap meet in October 1991. The partial plate was obscured by another vehicle.
Thirty-four years have passed. The name has not appeared in any accessible van show registry, Southern California car club record, or DMV-traceable history. The van itself has not surfaced at auction, in any follow-up publication, or on any forum thread we have been able to locate.
The case is open. Everything the community knows is in the evidence file below.
Two-page feature on the Pomona swap meet. One photograph shows the van departing — copper lower body, white upper, full porthole package, side-pipe exhaust. Owner name in the caption is misspelled ("Dan Kowalski" or possibly "Dan Kawalski"). Plate partially obscured by another vehicle.
Every lead, in order.
Leads are submitted by members and reviewed before they appear in the log. The case file is permanent — nothing is removed once the case closes.
Case 001 opened. The California Van assigned to the Lost & Driven programme. Original photograph sourced from Custom Van Magazine archive scan. Evidence catalogue compiled from the image and publication metadata.
Ran the magazine scan through TinEye and Google reverse image. Found what appears to be the same van in the background of a 1993 Van Nationals flyer — Bakersfield event. Image quality too low to confirm plates, but the porthole pattern and side-pipe silhouette match.
I lived on McKinley Ave in Pomona from 1991 to 1996. There was a copper-and-white van parked outside a storage unit near Garey Ave for about two years, maybe 1993–1995. It had a tarp on it by the end. I cannot confirm the porthole windows — wrong angle from where I saw it. Plate memory is partial: started with 2WM.
Cross-referenced California DMV records accessible through a vintage-vehicle registry. No Dodge Tradesman matching copper/white description appears in records between 1985 and 1998. This either means the registration lapsed before 1985, the colour was listed differently, or the van was registered in another state at some point.
On the mural question: the style visible in the photograph is consistent with a handful of Southern California painters who were active on the van show circuit in 1971–1976. The composition looks like it could be Rick Dore or one of his contemporaries — that generation was very well-documented by the show community. If we can get a higher-resolution scan of the magazine page, we might be able to identify the painter and work backwards to the commission.
Know something? Every detail counts.
A partial plate memory, a sighting from 30 years ago, the name of a painter who worked in Pomona in the 1970s — it all goes in the file. Leads are reviewed before publication.
The Vault opens
The moment a credible location is confirmed, the van receives a Vault entry. The case log transfers into the Vault as the first chapter of its documented history.
The finder is credited
Whoever submits the lead that breaks the case is named in the official case file and receives a lifetime Vault subscription — permanently attached to their account.
The file stays open
Even solved cases remain in the archive. The investigation log is permanent. No history is ever deleted — that's what the Vault is for.