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Happy Labor Day, everyone! Let’s celebrate the nobility of labor by avoiding it at all costs today, which is exactly what we intend to do here at the Autopian. It’s a day off. Feel free to take the opportunity to catch up on all the great stories you may have missed as you’ve been consumed by your own laboring. Also, I’d like to take a small moment to honor that true icon of American Labor, the engine through which commerce happened in America for so long, the Ford Econoline.

I know there have been plenty of other vans doing the hard work of moving crap around in America for decades, and the Econoline (later E-Series) hasn’t been around for a long while, but in my head, when I picture a workhorse van in a generic American city, with some logo on the side and a lot of small dents and scrapes, I almost always picture an Econoline.

Those early ones (like the one up top) were pretty charming-looking, too. Did you know they were originally part of the Falcon line? They were! Which feels odd, but, you know, the world was a different place then. Look at the “Falcon” badge on the door of that one up there!

This old Econoline commercial with Buster Keaton is interesting; Keaton died in 1966, so this had to be one of his last filmed performances, I’d think? It seems a short safety-comedy film called The Scribe was the last thing he shot before his death, but I suspect this commercial was pretty close.

Anyway, I hope you have a fantastic day off, and take a moment to appreciate the American labor movement, and prepare yourself mentally for the 20-hour workweek, which I’m sure is coming in just a few months.

The post Happy Labor Day With America’s Most Laborious Vehicle!: Cold Start appeared first on The Autopian.

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