Wild Cherry van’s now-legal owner is selling “Drive it Like You Stole It” t-shirts

Two months after reaching a plea deal in a California court that allowed him to keep the “Wild Cherry” van that he was charged with stealing, Chris Carter is restoring the van again—and selling t-shirts that make light of the situation.

For $30, Carter is marketing t-shirts on Facebook with an image of the 1975 Chevrolet G-10 custom van that made a brief appearance in the 1979 movie Van Nuys Blvd., along with the words, “Drive It Like You Stole It.”

Earlier today, July 17, Carter posted photos of the van and wrote, “My story is 100% True, a story that has Never Changed. You never have to think about the Truth. My conscience are 100% clean as they always have been… This Van will be rebuilt again the same as it was in the Movie Van Nuys Blvd.”

Responding to a follower in a comments section filled with congratulatory messages and encouragement, Carter wrote, “As long as I’m breathing, the only nut loose will be the 1 behind the wheel.”

On July 1, Carter posted an update video showing the van in the background, and it looks much better than it did the last time we saw it. In the video, Carter says he wanted to let his followers know that “everything worked out, and we’re going to get to rebuilding it again. I’ll claim my innocence until the end, and all’s (sic) I gotta say is ‘shit happens, man’. I have no idea what just happened over the last 8, 9 months, but here we are… That’s life. So we just gotta pick up the pieces and move on, regardless of how it happened or what happened.”

Carter went on to say, “Any negativity on my site will not be tolerated at all. I mean, if you want to have some constructive criticism that’s one thing, but I will not engage in any type of negative vibe at all… I understand that there’s going to be some [sup]porters and some haters, and that’s fine. I don’t expect everybody to like it, but that’s just how it goes. It’s mine, as it always has been.”

One person who would vehemently disagree is the van’s previous owner, Laura Godin, who was stunned to learn of the plea deal that was reached on May 17, which named Carter the legal owner of the van. Godin’s husband, Steven, bought the van on his 18th birthday decades earlier, and it was located on the Godins’ California property when Carter loaded it onto a trailer and drove it back to his Illinois residence.

On his recent Facebook video, Carter says that’s all water under the bridge. “That’s just the way it is. Deal with it. Don’t follow my page if you don’t like it.”