Cosmic Cruiser

An Artistic Automotive Marvel,
Built In Windsor, Continues To Captivate The World

Story by Matthew St. Amand
Photography by John Liviero

It was early 1976, Cobo Hall, and attendees at the North American Auto Show had the rare opportunity to view a man perform magic. The magician was Windsor artist Ivan Benic, wielding his magic wand: an airbrush. In the center of all the commotion at the most prestigious auto show on the continent, Ivan painted a mural on the side of his van.

“My van got a lot of attention at shows that year,” he remembers.

It was an amazing feat for a Croatian-born boy who came to Canada with his mother, at age fourteen. Ivan attended Frank W. Begley Public School where two teachers profoundly impacted his life: art teacher Peter Bering and track coach Sam Dragich. Both encouraged Ivan’s art and sharpened his work ethic. Ivan painted, sculpted, ran track and eventually became a champion wrestler. In his creative life, he developed into an accomplished, sought-after airbrush artist.

“In the summer of ’76, I went to the Kentucky Van Nationals in Bowling Green… There were seven thousand vans there. Mine was just coming out in magazines, but there I noticed a crowd around a 1969 Chevy van that was chopped, lowered, had big flares and I realized I needed to build myself a ‘radical.’”

A “radical” is a customized vehicle that has been transformed, inside and out, to where it’s more a sculpture than a mode of transportation.

“After Kentucky, I sold my van,” Ivan continues. “A guy from Sweden bought it. It’s now in Norway. I took that money and bought a 1973 Chevy, which had previously been an egg hauler, and started building my first radical.”

By this time, Ivan was a noted airbrush artist, but not yet a “body man”. He connected with Argentine body man Luigi Aquino, who worked from Ivan’s designs to create the first iteration of the Cosmic Cruiser. Among other modifications, Ivan designed a drastic, sloping front end for the van. 

The Cosmic Cruiser of the late 1970s was not yet the marvel it would become by the mid-1980s, but it graced the pages of numerous car and van magazines around the world. Ivan was invited to shows across Canada and in the United States to show off the Cosmic Cruiser. A poster of the van was made without Ivan’s permission, and eventually sold 27,000 copies, in Kmart stores everywhere.

In pre-Internet days, this level of notoriety was almost unheard of in the van world.

By the early 1980s, Ivan was burnt out, taking the Cosmic Cruiser across Canada a few times, touring from Montreal to Edmonton and Calgary, Alberta. 

Around this time the mini van was introduced to the driving public. While out in the Cosmic Cruiser, one afternoon, Ivan overheard a motorist alongside him at a red light admiring the vehicle, saying to his passenger: “Hey, that’s a customized mini van!” 

“That was probably because of the sloping front end,” Ivan explains. “Well, I thought to myself: ‘I can’t be a customized mini van!’ So, that summer, I decided to cut it up.” 

The transformation of the first Cosmic Cruiser into what is known today was a years-long process. 

“Around 1984, I got a call from a Toronto promoter who wanted me to bring the van out to a show,” Ivan says. “‘What magazine are you looking at?’ I asked him. The promoter told me, and I said: ‘Sorry, pal, the van’s all apart, it’s down to bare metal. I’m doing dual axles, rear axles, and twin engines…’” 

Rather than being put off, the promoter said: “Really? Can you send me some pictures?” 

Ivan did so and soon after, the promoter sent him funds to complete the restoration. On a new, accelerated schedule, work that might have taken years was completed in months. 

“I worked crazy hours to get the work done,” Ivan says. “I slept in the van, under the van, and I finished the work by the time of the Toronto show.” 

The transformed Cosmic Cruiser was a sensation at the van show.

“There were eighty-five vans. I drove through six inches of snow to get there!” Ivan says. 

A year later, an article about the Cosmic Cruiser appeared in local media. It soon hit the wire services and went worldwide.

The final major physical change to the Cosmic Cruiser saw Ivan extend the body to its current length of almost ten metres, and outfitting the interior with a bed, sofa, and sound system.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Cosmic Cruiser in its present form.

Old vans don’t die… they fade away.

One day this year, feeling like the Cosmic Cruiser’s time in the spotlight had
faded from memory, Ivan posted some photographs of it on Facebook.

“For the longest time, I limited how many photos I’d put on the Internet because I figured nobody was interested anymore,” he says. “Within days, one of them received 98,000 views. I posted more photos and they received so many views that Facebook contacted me about monetizing my account. I didn’t know what that meant.”

The analytics tally counts in twenty-eight-day period. For the most recent period, Ivan’s images racked up 1.8 million views. One viral video garnered 275,000 views.

“Once I monetized the account, no matter what I post, it gets tons of views,” Ivan says. “In the first month of monetizing, my account got 1.2 million views. This month, it’s verging on two million. I’m also posting all of my old art work.” 

The Cosmic Cruiser is like a time machine. It’s not only a throwback to an era when custom vans ruled the earth, but it is a rolling chronicle of Ivan’s personal history and life as an artist.

“The changes that I make to the Cruiser are important to me,” he says. “The passenger-side panel depicts my life as an artist. I painted several vehicles sitting on top of magazines where they were featured, like ‘1001 Van Ideas’ and ‘Hot Rod Magazine.’ I painted a castle and a beachscape and my first van. The castle is my subliminal signature, a pillar. It’s an ‘I’ and then a van—an ‘I-van.’”

The driver’s side panel of the van depicts scenes from Ivan’s early years in Croatia. Every line has personal significance. 

“My next project is building a car of my own design,” Ivan says. “And I would one day like to see the Cosmic Cruiser go to the Canadian Transportation Museum and Heritage Village.”

See what all the excitement is about by checking out Ivan’s work on his Facebook page www.facebook.com/ivan.benic.1.  

Published in the Autumn 2025 Edition.