The Funk Mobile

UPDATE!  If you see the Funk Mobile driving around town, PLEASE take a picture and upload it your social media avenue of choice (Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn).  You will enter yourself in to an ongoing monthly random drawing to win a gift card to a local eatery/drinkery!  So, get with the program and help spread the word about The Funk Mobile!

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Sometimes I have bad ideas and sometimes I have good ideas.  Then there is the very rare occasion when I have a GREAT idea, and this was/is one, I’m confident of it!

I kept driving by this rickety corner of town with an old beat up purple (or was it brown), rusty van for sale.  It was, as my neighbors eventually called it, a “murderers van”…among several other adjective + noun combinations…you can figure it out with your own pre-judgements by its appearance, below:

It was, for all intents and purposes, a piece of junk (notice the hole in the roof, covered by duct tape)…or was it?!  I texted the number, more as a joke or curiosity at best.  The gentleman ensured me the van was on the up and up, working A/C, etc.  Riiiiiight, ok.  A week or two passed and there it sat, ugly and, well, just plain ugly.  But I had an idea.  To me, this was a giant, 15-passenger van of a blank canvas, that could be, at the very least, a giant rolling billboard.  I had, after all, considered leasing a billboard on IH-35, so this was a GREAT idea, in my opinion.  I started conjuring up ideas, tinkering, scribbling, etc:

After some back and forth with the seller, an inspection by my mechanic, The Auto Dr (fantastic, btw), I bit the bullet and bought the dern thing!  Now I just needed to make it shine!  I couldn’t do it (aside from the sanding, scrubbing, buffing, etc), so I got several quotes to wrap the beast, and finally got ‘er done!  Austin Sign Co did a fantastic job!  My vision is/was to have a mobile office where we could host remote closings, do property tours, and, in general, host clients in our cool vehicle!  It has to be pretty!  So we had it wrapped…see:

It’s great!  Already getting tons of attention, which is what we need.  Next step, the interior!  One interim tweak, I painted the wheels/rims to be solid white, so they “popped”!

So, now we will soup up the inside, add some flash, bang, boom, or at least a headliner!  Maybe some nifty lights, speaker upgrade, then a cooler, for sure.  Then we will be off to the races, shaking up this industry, one ride at a time!  Or at least embarrassing the kids, one trip at a time!

Here’s a before & after of The Funk Mobile with a picture one of the neighbors took whilst expressing their concern on social media about the “murderer’s van” and then a new picture we took as close to the same spot after the wrap job was completed.  We thought it was funny, and will be fun!