The concept of the multi-purpose-vehicle was in its infancy in the early 1980’s before developing into the minivan trend. This was right around the same time the Star Wars franchise concluded in 1983 with Return of the Jedi, which captured the imagination of a global audience that grew up hiding under school desks from a looming threat of nuclear obliteration. The news of the era relayed constant developments in space travel and satellite technology, while the United States and the Soviet Union battled for dominance. Musical artist Nena rose to fame also in 1983, singing about the paranoid war-mongering world powers springing into action to defend the nation; the incoming threat turned out to just be 99 red balloons floating in the summer sky. Back on earth, the strange-looking people-carrier that automaker Toyota debuted in 1983 was actually named “Space Cruiser” (for the British market) [01], and looked the part. While the Toyota van evolved into the less-exciting-named Town Ace (or just “Van” in the U.S.), it maintained its spacey aesthetics and ahead-of-the-curve utilitarian charm for at least the following decade.
1983 Toyota Space Cruiser ad [01]
With the popularity of Jet-Age styling in the United States, and the almost universal obsession with space travel during the Cold War that followed, it wasn’t much of a stretch that automobile styling might segue from imitating 1950’s and 1960's jets to referencing things beyond our atmosphere in the years that followed. However, perhaps the greatest irony of late-Cold-War van design is that most-spaceshippy-looking vans of them all were designed and built by Toyota. As it happens, Japan was one of the few automobile-producing nations that for most of its history had no military or industrial programs designed to get humans into space. In fact, the first Japanese citizen to leave the Earth for space did so in the fall of 1992. Astronaut Mohri Mamoru left Earth’s atmosphere only a few weeks before the feature vehicle of this article was manufactured, and decades behind other major world powers like the Soviet Union (1961), United States (1961), or Germany (1978). While everyone else was fantasizing about leaving Earth for realms beyond, Toyota instead brought alien styling to our planet, and it was delightful.
1993 Toyota Town Ace "Super Extra" 4WD owned by Mike Hanlon, photo by Bailey Delelys at the Strasenburgh Planetarium, Rochester Museum and Science Center, Rochester NY
The 1993 Toyota Town Ace “Super Extra” 4WD resembles a pill-shaped futuristic glass-enclosed handbasket. Only the B-pillar is painted metal like the lower body; the rest of the structure is masked behind the curtain of glass, and the overall shape has almost no hard edges, like a well-used rubber eraser. The Town Ace is transparent above the midsection from almost every angle, and features a strange band of lights including bright yellow fog lamps across the front end that give it an extra-alien look at night.
"SpaceVan" en route home from the Pacific Northwest, photo by owner Mike Hanlon
And then there’s the sound – a tiny diesel burble accompanied by a turbo whistle-whine that sounds like an audio sample of the Jetson’s family car. The Town Ace gives off an aura of not-from-here, although that's probably partly due to the fact that this particular specimen literally is not from here; it was never available for sale on U.S. shores. Globally, it’s not a rare vehicle: nearly one million CR30-type units were constructed for the Japanese and Australian market between 1992 and 1996, with over 180,000 in 1993 alone [02]. It is right-hand-drive by default of its limited distribution market, so in the United States passengers sit on the would-be driver’s side, making the passenger experience even more strange – that is, once the concept of having your legs forward of the front axle settles in.
"SpaceVan" rear 3/4 view, photo by Bailey Delelys
Owner Michael Hanlon is no stranger to JDM space-vans. In his college years he owned a 1987 Toyota. It was a windowless cargo variant that Toyota creatively named "Van", but it was the basis for the Space Cruiser nonetheless. It was somewhat boxier than the 1993 successor, was dark brown metallic, and had tons of storage space over a 2WD chassis (he purchased it even though it had been falsely advertised as 4WD, which was what he had wanted). It looked like a passenger shuttle from the Star Trek series. The Van was a high quality machine, but it performed terribly in the snow with limited weight over the rear, and lacked a second set of driving wheels. Hanlon loved it, but it didn't meet his driving needs at the time, so he sold it in 1991 and purchased a 1992 GMC pick-up truck shortly after. Hanlon reports that the 1987 Van fell into the category that almost every classic car owner has: "vehicles I regret ever selling."
"SpaceVan" passenger side close-up; note the rear-facing middle row of seats, photo by Bailey Delelys
At a time when finances and other life circumstances allowed, Hanlon re-ignited his nostalgic search for an alien cruiser. He found this 1993 model at Van Life Northwest in the late winter of 2018. It was rated a highest-scoring 4 in quality with only 35,000 miles, and came with a long list of maintenance and repair items that had been done to bring it back from lightly used condition. Power comes from a 2.0L turbo diesel rated at a comical but sufficient 97 horsepower. It maintained the non-traditional glass-bubble look, but with a revised front end that looked slightly more domestic than the earlier generation Toyota Vans. It also featured a third row bench seat, with a total capacity of 8 passengers (the “Super Extra” part). One of the only modifications that Hanlon has made that deviate from a factory-spec look are the custom-powder-coated dark grey wheels. The wheels might look familiar – they are from a Suzuki Grand Vitara, an idea inspired by a fellow online Toyota van personality that Hanlon came across. He has nicknamed this quirky vehicle the “Spacevan”.
Close-up of the Suzuki wheels Hanlon fitted to dress up the look a bit, photo by Bailey Delelys
Hanlon maintains that one of the aspects that attracted him to this very ‘extra’ non-U.S. market variation is that it's so much more fun and unique than the domestic Previa alternative, which was styled such that it more closely resembled traditional American market competitors like the Dodge Grand Caravan and Chevy Lumina. The Town Ace on the other hand, Hanlon described as the "meanwhile in Japan" option that should have been available on the American market.
"SpaceVan" en route home from the Pacific Northwest, photo by owner Mike Hanlon
While it’s totally possible that any Town Ace might have been found in a Wal-Mart parking lot stuffed with junior-varsity sports equipment and floors covered in cracker and Pop-Tart crumbs, Spacevan doesn’t give off that vibe. This is perhaps the greatest difference between any American minivan and the Toyota Town Ace. American minivans of the same era were inward-facing and narrow-minded in function despite their potential for versatility. The General Motors lineup of vans even offered a Warner Brothers feature with seat-back and ceiling-mounted televisions to occupy the attention of static American children with a reputation for couch-potato-ing.
"Skylite" pop-up glass roof vents on both sides let in daylight and fresh air, photo by Bailey Delelys
On the contrary, inside the Town Ace, in every direction passengers see the outside world from different perspectives: directly in front with virtually no dashboard, directly above through the portholes above the driver and passenger, and out every side and top corner through the expansive side windows and “Skylite” pop-up roof that doubles as operable ventilation. In the United States in 1993, a glass canopy that big on a car was reserved for science-fiction Ford Explorers touring Jurassic Park, and the passengers of those vehicles were a little more concerned with the flaws of that design than its benefits.
The interior of SpaceVan also does more than simply turn into a mattress. The middle bench rotates 180 degrees, transforming the rear compartment into a makeshift glass-roofed conference room, configured for comfortable conversation between passengers. At its core, the Town Ace still was a cargo van retrofitted with a much more comfy interior, but it wasn’t as obvious as, for example, the Ford Econoline equivalent.
Interior cabin of "SpaceVan", with rotating second row, fold-flat third row, and glass almost everywhere above the beltline, photo by Bailey Delelys
When asked to describe his favorite thing about the Town Ace, Hanlon focused less on the vehicle, and more on the context in which it came to be. Hanlon defended his love for the Town Ace saying, “To me, it’s about the culture - in 1993, this brand new van came with full privacy curtains, and with seats that fold flat like it was made to sleep in. In the United States, it is not acceptable to sleep in your car. People would look down on you, or think you are homeless – even if you are just tired from a long drive, and just want to rest.” The Town Ace serves a deeper purpose than just movement between places: it was built for adventure, and for bringing people closer to each other, and to our world.
"SpaceVan" at sunset en route home from the Pacific Northwest, photo by owner Mike Hanlon
In order to reinforce his ideas about the true purpose of the Town Ace, Hanlon set out on his first adventure immediately after purchase, on temporary Oregon plates that expired 20 days after issuance. Rather than ship the Town Ace from Portland, Oregon to Rochester, New York, he plotted out an adventure that would take him through the beautiful scenery of the continental United States, but also get him home to Rochester before his temporary license plates expired en route.
Hanlon departed Oregon in the Spacevan and headed first down Route 1 skirting along the Pacific coast to San Francisco to visit friends. He passed through giant sequoia trees and zipped down the iconic Pacific Coast Highway with rock outcroppings to his left and the ocean to his right. After San Francisco, he ventured through desert territory to Las Vegas, and crossed over snowy Mountain terrain to pick up Route 66. The all-American highway led him to the Chicago region, where he then took the rust belt route home through Cleveland, Erie and Buffalo before returning to Rochester. This journey is documented in detail – accompanied by stunning photography by Hanlon himself – on his Instagram @Spacevan.Life [03]. For the duration of the trip, the Town Ace served as his transportation, but also his home and his prop for dramatic photography of harsh snow-covered landscapes, roadside architecture, peaceful meadows, and setting suns.
"SpaceVan" captured by the owner en route home from the Pacific Northwest, photos by Mike Hanlon
The Spacevan makes a great prop at home too, where Hanlon enjoys taking it to local Cars & Coffee events and burbling around town looking ready to film a documentary on the Australian outback. The mild rolling hills of the glacial moraine that is Rochester don’t offer the most extraordinary backdrops for dramatic photos, so Spacevan was captured for this feature by photographer Bailey Delelys of Elba, NY at the Strasenburgh Planetarium of the Rochester Museum and Science Center in early October of 2021. The Planetarium, finished in the fall of 1968, was an extraordinary construction that references a spiral nebula in plan, and houses the first computer-automated video and star projector in the world, which remains in daily service today casting theatrical presentations about space, the ocean, and other topics onto the 65-foot diameter spherical screen several times each afternoon.
Time-exposure composite photograph at the main entrance of the Strasenburgh Planetarium, Rochester Museum and Science Center, photo by Bailey Delelys
Like the many stresses of the Final Frontier, winters in Rochester are awfully harsh on machines, so the van spends winter months comfortably packed away in storage with some other classic car companions. In the summer, Spacevan is a quasi-daily driver, splitting the burden of Hanlon’s road time with his 2006 Toyota Prius, a handful of 1970’s Puch mopeds, a custom Suzuki DR650-based motorcycle, and - because he really does love adventure - a KTM Adventure 950 motorcycle. Future adventures for Spacevan in the coming years are likely to involve camping trips here and there, and treks to Vermont where he hopes to visit other vintage scooter friends and go on some wildlife photography excursions.
Michael Lempert
Rochester, NY
2023.08.30
P.S.: Many thanks to the owner, Michael Hanlon, and my friend and talented photographer Bailey Delelys (IG: @Baileythecoolguy) for their cooperation with making this feature come to fruition.
Additional photos from Bailey in the gallery below:
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All photographs are property of the credited photographers. Please ask permission before using any images, either directly from the author or by others where applicable.
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