The story of the 1975 Chevrolet G10 known as “Wild Cherry” has become 2018’s biggest soap opera story. It starts out fantastic: a van seemingly left for dead is rescued by a man enamored with it’s super-quick cameo appearance in a 1979 movie, is restored to the nines and is driven cross-country upon completion of the restoration to do what it did in the movie: cruise Van Nuys Boulevard once more in full glory. For Chris Carter, the enamored soul who seemingly went to great lengths to put the G10 back together from it’s left-for-dead appearance, the hard work paid off in the end.

Then red flags started flying left, right and center. A woman named Laura Godin filed a stolen vehicle report in June after they learned that the van that they had owned since 1980 had been removed from their California property without their permission. The “Wild Cherry Van Run”, the cross-country trip that Carter promoted on a Facebook page for the van, went off without a hitch and the van did indeed see Van Nuys Boulevard one more time. Then things got strange. The G10 vanished off of the map after the cruise in September, Carter was arrested on October 3rd, 2018 in Edwardsville, Illinois and remained in jail until October 26th, when he was extradited to California to face charges that include two felony counts of driving/taking a vehicle without consent, and one misdemeanor of trespassing. According to the detective that is working the case, Carter is not being too cooperative with the investigation, and it will be interesting to see what happens when he is arraigned on November 29th.

For the last month, the question has been, “where did the van go?” A deep red disco van with gold-leaf lettering sitting on wide and wider Cragar mags should stick out like a sore thumb, right? Well, that answer was found in Van Nuys, abandoned on the side of a road, stripped of just about everything possible and hastily shot in what looks to be rattlecan black primer. Check out the photo, taken on the Wild Cherry Van Run, and then look at the photos taken from the impound lot. Every last thing is gone minus the shell itself. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department believes that the Chevy was abandoned about a month ago and is interested in any information regarding what happened to the van, where the parts are and who is responsible for the wholesale strip job. Given that Carter was in jail in Illinois during that time, officials are looking for other individuals of interest.