Making the Case for Van Life With Artist Neko Case

Singer Neko Case has been nominated for three Grammy awards. Her album Middle Cyclone hit #3 on the Billboard charts. Her songs have been heard on the soundtracks for True Blood, Boardwalk Empire, and The Hunger Games. She’s a core member of the indie rock supergroup The New Pornographers. And her voice has been described by the New York Times as a “vocal tornado.” We are huge fans of everything she does, and you should be too, for all of these reasons, but also because she loves cars.Tim Mosenfelder|Getty ImagesNeko Case’s first love was horses. The three-time Grammy award–nominated 54 year-old singer and musician writes about that in her harrowing and beautiful new memoir, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You (2025, Grand Central). She comments that girls’ fascination with horses is not, as tedious theories about girls and equines would have it, some kind of ‘erotic’ connection but because “We want to be horses. As simple as that. We want physical equality! We want to run free.” The Harder I Fight the More I Love You: A MemoirNow 23% OffMany of us feel the same about cars, and Case was no exception. She was impatient to realize this freedom in her childhood and grabbed for it wherever she could, despite being hampered by a broad range of impediments—including often absent and addled parents, sexual abuse, and chilling poverty. She found it first in music, playing and composing with a range of collaborators in the Pacific Northwest of her youth. But soon after, she found it in driving.”That feeling of being in charge of where you’re going, and you’re in your own little universe, was something that was really, really huge to me,” she tells Car and Driver.Like her relative Ella Waldek, who was “a famous professional wrestler before professional wrestling became what it became,” Case says she wanted to be “a tough lady who went out on her own and did things.”Anti RecordsShe worked and saved her money and eventually bought herself a faded yellow 1964 Ford Falcon for $350. Then, she taught herself to drive—all by herself. She never went to the DMV. “Every single outing was exciting,” she says. “Going to the grocery store was exciting. And usually, I would drive at night. It seemed like I was getting away with something, doing something against the law—which I was because I didn’t have a license. But it felt so good. There’s no way I wouldn’t have done it.”Case also taught herself how to keep her beloved beater running. This was in part a function of financial necessity. But it was also a moral stand against a patriarchal culture that actively dissuaded her from following her passion. “It was something I wasn’t supposed to be able to do, which seemed absolutely ludicrous,” Case says of wrenching. “So, I decided to prove to myself that that wasn’t true, because whether or not I have a vagina should not matter if I’m working on a car, and it doesn’t.”When Case sold the Falcon to a friend, she purchased a $50 bronze 1963 AMC Rambler Classic 660, the engine compartment of which was so large that she could stand inside it, ahead of the straight-six, offering ample proximity for deepening her mechanical skills. She learned to rebuild a carburetor and replace a generator. [Fun Fact: AMC was transitioning from generators to alternators during the ’62-to-’64 build period; some models came with the new technology and some with the old.] Eventually, when Case started touring, she graduated up to a classic road vehicle: a van. “That van could make mine and other people’s dreams come true,” Case says, reverently. “With the diesel motor and the big gas tank, it could go across three states without having to stop.” Like many musicians, she owned a series of these boxy haulers. Her favorite was a half-brown, half-silver 12-passenger 1988 GMC Rally STX with a 6.2-liter Detroit Diesel and a 33-gallon tank. Barn doors opened to bench seats upholstered in golden-brown vinyl and cloth. A custom wooden console could accommodate cups of extra-large coffee. Because of its color, and the fact that it was produced in Scarborough, Ontario, it was nicknamed The Beaver.
“That van could make mine and other people’s dreams come true,” Case says, reverently. “With the diesel motor and the big gas tank, it could go across three states without having to stop. It was just such a good vehicle.” So beloved was The Beaver that its open rear doors are pictured on her album Blacklisted. Case eventually sold the van to a musician friend, James McGuinn (grandson of Roger McGuinn of The Byrds), who still uses it for touring. Though she maintains visitation rights on The Beaver, Case, who now resides in Vermont, near the Canadian border, is no longer active in #vanlife. “I don’t have a van anymore, but I do have van envy,” she says. “They’re just not practical in the Northeast because there’s no such thing as a four-wheel-drive van. So it’s just not an appropriate vehicle for where I live. It is just way too snowy here.” (Case specifically is bemoaning the lack of a modern GMC 4×4, being apparently immune to the charms of a Mercedes Sprinter van—Ed.)It’s also too snowy for the 1967 Mercury Cougar—nicknamed Angie Dickinson—which she owned and famously stood atop on the cover of her Grammy-nominated album Middle Cyclone. Case auctioned it off to benefit 826, a national youth writing nonprofit. Instead, she now makes do with a pair of all-wheel-drive stalwarts: a silvery-blue 2021 Subaru Outback, nicknamed The Mackerel, for its coloration, and a 2024 GMC Sierra pickup. The truck doesn’t have a nickname, because Case says she just hasn’t bonded with it. “I want to find a connection with my current truck that I don’t really have because you can’t put music on unless it’s from your phone. And I don’t keep music on my phone,” she says. The car lacks an aux input, and Case’s extremely rural location means that cell coverage is not universal, so streaming isn’t a real option. “I cannot form a connection with my truck, which is weird because I’m super in love with my vehicles,” she says.Case’s love of classics may get a boost from her latest project. She recently announced participation in an upcoming Broadway musical. Case is writing the music for a stage adaptation of famed feminist road trip movie Thelma and Louise, a film in which the eponymous protagonists, and their 1966 Ford Thunderbird convertible, meet a chasmic demise. At the end of our conversation, Case expresses gratitude for the chance to talk about her automotive affection. “Thanks so much for talking about cars with me. I love them,” she says. Then she pauses, apparently still thinking about her lack of aux connectivity. “And tell GMC I got a bone to pick with them.”Related StoriesBrett Berk (he/him) is a former preschool teacher and early childhood center director who spent a decade as a youth and family researcher and now covers the topics of kids and the auto industry for publications including CNN, the New York Times, Popular Mechanics and more. He has published a parenting book, The Gay Uncle’s Guide to Parenting, and since 2008 has driven and reviewed thousands of cars for Car and Driver and Road & Track, where he is contributing editor. He has also written for Architectural Digest, Billboard, ELLE Decor, Esquire, GQ, Travel + Leisure and Vanity Fair.   
Source: caranddriver.com