I shuddered when I saw your little Ford "van", until I remembered that my first gig transport (other than riding shotgun with my dad) was a 10 year old '63 Beetle.
At the time, I had just bought a used Gibson bass amp. I can't remember the model, but it was the companion to the Les Paul LP1 and LP2 guitar stack, and sized to look equally imposing.
It was a ridiculous-looking thing, with blue tinsel grille cloth on an enormously over-sized twin 15 cab. The cab was wider and deeper front-to-back than any 2x15 I'd ever seen. There was a solid-state power amp in the bottom of the cab, and it was ridiculous for the era- definitely over 100 watts. I have a vague idea that it might have been as much as 200. It Eminence drivers, with huge square magnets. This mess was driven by a small preamp that sat on top of the cab like a pimple. It had coloured pea bulbs behind a translucent plastic panel, so the controls glowed different colors.
The thing was hilariously loud. It would have healthy competition for an SVT, if it weren't for the minor detail that the output was all bass- no discernable mids or treble. Whoever thought this was the perfect match for the mudbucker pickups on Gibson basses of the time, needed their head read.
Even with fresh roundwounds on my new-to-me '64 P-bass, the riff from In a Gadda Da Vida sounded like a herd of elephants moving furniture around under water.
Anyway, it tuned out that if I removed the back seat from the Beetle and replaced the stock front buckets with a pair of tiny ones from an old Austin Healey Sprite, I could just barely shoehorn the thing in the back.
Whether that's a good idea when you're headed for a polka wedding in a legion hall, circa October 1973, is a whole other story...
Needless to say, although I might say I've always been a competent bass player, having such a large car was always a plus for landing gigs! Here's a generic interweb picture of the car.
.
.
