Back in `84 on a family holiday around Europe my parents purchased what was an ex-PostNL VW Combi converted into a camper. It had done a lot of miles. We drove it right around Europe with only one breakdown in a small town in Germany that fortunately had a VW mechanic.
But possibly the most memorable time spent in the van was when it came time to sell it.
Next to where the London Eye is now was what was known as "the strip" with a lineup of campers being sold on to newly arrived tourists. I spent two weeks living in the van next to the Thames, a short walk to Waterloo Station and a lot of time just wandering the streets of London alone (as a 14yo).
Really cool story! It's always been my premise that good maintenance means longevity on vehicles. I keep our vehicles with the idea of "driving the wheels off of them", but always end up giving them to my kids after wanting an upgrade vehicle with some modern tech. (One of them has almost 200K miles on it.)
As for a Honda Element, I've always wanted one, but my wife thinks they're ugly. ;)
> It's always been my premise that good maintenance means longevity on vehicles.
There are myriad examples of manufacturing defects and cost optimizations that lead to early failures regardless of maintenance. I would not trust a well maintained Stellantis vehicle to make it to 200k miles regardless of how well it was maintained.
I picked up one as well and even after flying to pick it up and fuel for driving 700 miles back I'm in it less than $4K. My theory was fleet maintenance to some extent mitigated the 330K miles and even if it takes a crate engine to keep it running I probably still get enough value to be worth it. Turns out I got 19 mpg on the drive back and the only thing I've found wrong with it so far is dead battery in a tps. Wrap is goofy looking but at least I'm never going to lose it in a parking lot.
When properly cared for, and owned outside of the rust belt, these vans will go a million miles. Hell, I've seen a Chevy Express van in the rust belt with over 500k (that's 800k if you're French).
They're so simplistic, and parts are so easy to find, that frame rot is really the only thing that can permanently kill one. It's really a shame that the Express is the last van of this breed that's still hanging around. The stubby nose makes spark plugs a harrowing experience, but everything else is easy. They were built to be used indefinitely.
Oh man, i rented one of those! I fell in love with the west coast national parks. A month of roadtripping to all those parks. Great memories, sad to see the. Not available anymore.
They are speed limited when you floor it in Nevada tho :)
I can tell you from visiting French campsites that Dutch parents have no problem copulating with their children nearby. Or just send them to the pool or the kids club.
Our VW T4 from 2002 has 300k km on it. I consider this half it's total possible mileage, if not less. I wish they would still build reliable cars like these today.
Look at Nissan. Their CVTs are known to have an effective life of about 60,000 miles. Anything beyond that is betting against the reaper. Because of the way the transmission is mated to the engine (in order to reduce the overall size) most times the cost to replace it costs more than the car is worth. Many times insurance will total a seven or eight year old Rogue or Altima if the CVT needs replaced. This is because Nissans depreciate in value so quickly, and it's somewhat of an ouroboros in that they depreciate in value so quickly because of the short lifetimes of the CVTs.
Meanwhile Mitsubishi has been suffering issues with their AWD systems failing, and because the Eclipse Cross and Outlander Sport are sold primarily as AWD that affects a majority of their sales.
Ford's had the issue with the dual-clutch automatics failing on the Focus, Fiesta, and Escape.
Dodge has... Well, really only the Durango currently that's reliable. The Charger PHEV is having all sorts off issues, from the battery packs overheating to random software glitches to the engine refusing to disengage from the electric portion of the drivetrain. The Hornet's been getting the shit kicked out of it by Kelley Blue Book and Consumer Reports because the transmissions are ripping themselves apart and the BCMs are bricking themselves.
Jeep's had issues with the Cherokee, Wrangler, Gladiator, and Compass because of the Pentastar engine nuking itself before 100,000 miles either by losing too much oil or the water jackets cracking. Meanwhile the differentials in the Wrangler and Gladiator have had problems that Stellantis denies.
Back before about... I'd say 2016? 2017? You had a lot less issues with new cars. Most issues were simple recalls like transmissions slipping out of gear or premature wear on the cams, not something that would entirely junk the car.
Electronics don't usually last for more than 30 years. Pre-2007 cars can be driven for that long because they had minimal electronics and relatively oversized manufacturing. This was because managers hadn't yet taken charge of reducing material thickness to the absolute minimum.
Most new vehicles can be driven to 100k kilometers without significant issues.
Back in the 80s that was just unheard of. Most cars needed significant repairs before 100k and even require welding and sealing to prevent the floor from falling out. Material quality, paint, bearings, tires and fluids were of significantly lower quality back then.
100K kilometers? Even a Chevy Chevette could make it that far without major trouble. 100K miles, that’s about when 80s cars started to become more trouble than they were worth, IME.
Ah, got it. I have tried very hard to forget about 70s/80s Fiats. :-)
When is the last time you had a car undercoated?
I take your point, but the real answer is “when I lived the U. S. Midwest”, where they salt the roads. Since we moved to the milder climate of Washington state, even our ‘81 VW’s body is in great shape. But, yeah, in the 80s: straight from the dealer to the undercoat place.
A 2006 car is pretty safe. It won't have gizmos like lane departure warnings or automatic braking but crash safety will be about as good as a new car, especially if you buy one that had good crash safety ratings at the time, such as Mercedes or Volvo.
Can you really or is it like the T1N Sprinters where yeah you technically can take the longblock to half a mil or more but you'll have replaced everything external to it twice over by then?
For a while my car buying strat was to buy a new Asian car and run it for 130,000 or more miles. In the pandemic though we had to get my son a car in a hurry so he could drive to work and new and gently used cars were hard to find so we discovered you can always get a pretty cool old car for that kind of money with the expectation that pretty soon you're going to spend about the purchase price in repairs; in our case it was just fine because once he had the job he had the money to pay for repairs himself and it is still a lot less than the payments on a new car.
$4K is about my limit for a car. You can do a lot better than "runs and drives" at that price point, but there's always a chance of getting a dud. Documented maintenance history really helps, but most people don't keep it.
A van that's seen a lot of highway miles and was owned by a large fleet is almost always a good bet. It's shuttle services who are skipping everything they can because "lol we're depreciating this over 3yr and then trading in" are who you gotta be worried about.
This is basically a story about who people cut from a filter bubble that circle jerk about Sprinters and Camrys are shocked to find that the most popular fleet van of the 1980s-2010 does in fact live up to it's value prop of delivering boring reliable service to business to which it is just a cost center to be minimized.
Back in `84 on a family holiday around Europe my parents purchased what was an ex-PostNL VW Combi converted into a camper. It had done a lot of miles. We drove it right around Europe with only one breakdown in a small town in Germany that fortunately had a VW mechanic.
But possibly the most memorable time spent in the van was when it came time to sell it.
Next to where the London Eye is now was what was known as "the strip" with a lineup of campers being sold on to newly arrived tourists. I spent two weeks living in the van next to the Thames, a short walk to Waterloo Station and a lot of time just wandering the streets of London alone (as a 14yo).
Really cool story! It's always been my premise that good maintenance means longevity on vehicles. I keep our vehicles with the idea of "driving the wheels off of them", but always end up giving them to my kids after wanting an upgrade vehicle with some modern tech. (One of them has almost 200K miles on it.)
As for a Honda Element, I've always wanted one, but my wife thinks they're ugly. ;)
> It's always been my premise that good maintenance means longevity on vehicles.
There are myriad examples of manufacturing defects and cost optimizations that lead to early failures regardless of maintenance. I would not trust a well maintained Stellantis vehicle to make it to 200k miles regardless of how well it was maintained.
I picked up one as well and even after flying to pick it up and fuel for driving 700 miles back I'm in it less than $4K. My theory was fleet maintenance to some extent mitigated the 330K miles and even if it takes a crate engine to keep it running I probably still get enough value to be worth it. Turns out I got 19 mpg on the drive back and the only thing I've found wrong with it so far is dead battery in a tps. Wrap is goofy looking but at least I'm never going to lose it in a parking lot.
When properly cared for, and owned outside of the rust belt, these vans will go a million miles. Hell, I've seen a Chevy Express van in the rust belt with over 500k (that's 800k if you're French).
They're so simplistic, and parts are so easy to find, that frame rot is really the only thing that can permanently kill one. It's really a shame that the Express is the last van of this breed that's still hanging around. The stubby nose makes spark plugs a harrowing experience, but everything else is easy. They were built to be used indefinitely.
Wouldn't even need a crate engine if it came to needing a replacement, a good used engine for that would be easy to find.
Funny, I just camped next to one on the Oregon coast. Was wondering about the out-of-place paint job.
Oh man, i rented one of those! I fell in love with the west coast national parks. A month of roadtripping to all those parks. Great memories, sad to see the. Not available anymore. They are speed limited when you floor it in Nevada tho :)
> random Dutch families who drove it across the US
I’m wondering how much that van has contributed to the population increase of The Netherlands.
> families
IDK about you, but traveling with a family would be an effective anti-conception for me (also Dutch)
And effective for my folks as well when they took my siblings to tour the west coast in an RV when we were teens, AFAICT.
Traveling with just my SO OTOH...
I can tell you from visiting French campsites that Dutch parents have no problem copulating with their children nearby. Or just send them to the pool or the kids club.
But not while all inside a van right? Plz...
Our VW T4 from 2002 has 300k km on it. I consider this half it's total possible mileage, if not less. I wish they would still build reliable cars like these today.
Average vehicle milage before being scrapped is still on the rise, so I assume they still do.
> I wish they would still build reliable cars like these today.
How do you know they don't?
Look at Nissan. Their CVTs are known to have an effective life of about 60,000 miles. Anything beyond that is betting against the reaper. Because of the way the transmission is mated to the engine (in order to reduce the overall size) most times the cost to replace it costs more than the car is worth. Many times insurance will total a seven or eight year old Rogue or Altima if the CVT needs replaced. This is because Nissans depreciate in value so quickly, and it's somewhat of an ouroboros in that they depreciate in value so quickly because of the short lifetimes of the CVTs.
Meanwhile Mitsubishi has been suffering issues with their AWD systems failing, and because the Eclipse Cross and Outlander Sport are sold primarily as AWD that affects a majority of their sales.
Ford's had the issue with the dual-clutch automatics failing on the Focus, Fiesta, and Escape.
Dodge has... Well, really only the Durango currently that's reliable. The Charger PHEV is having all sorts off issues, from the battery packs overheating to random software glitches to the engine refusing to disengage from the electric portion of the drivetrain. The Hornet's been getting the shit kicked out of it by Kelley Blue Book and Consumer Reports because the transmissions are ripping themselves apart and the BCMs are bricking themselves.
Jeep's had issues with the Cherokee, Wrangler, Gladiator, and Compass because of the Pentastar engine nuking itself before 100,000 miles either by losing too much oil or the water jackets cracking. Meanwhile the differentials in the Wrangler and Gladiator have had problems that Stellantis denies.
Back before about... I'd say 2016? 2017? You had a lot less issues with new cars. Most issues were simple recalls like transmissions slipping out of gear or premature wear on the cams, not something that would entirely junk the car.
Electronics don't usually last for more than 30 years. Pre-2007 cars can be driven for that long because they had minimal electronics and relatively oversized manufacturing. This was because managers hadn't yet taken charge of reducing material thickness to the absolute minimum.
Manual or automatic? Because the Eurovans here in the US are famous for eating their automatic transmissions.
Yes, manual. It is very rare to find automatic cars of that age in Europe.
Most new vehicles can be driven to 100k kilometers without significant issues.
Back in the 80s that was just unheard of. Most cars needed significant repairs before 100k and even require welding and sealing to prevent the floor from falling out. Material quality, paint, bearings, tires and fluids were of significantly lower quality back then.
100K kilometers? Even a Chevy Chevette could make it that far without major trouble. 100K miles, that’s about when 80s cars started to become more trouble than they were worth, IME.
In Europe we were pumping out some very crappy cars in the 80s. And in the north-east cars would have structural rust problems within five years.
When is the last time you had a car undercoated? Because back then that was the first thing you did with a new vehicle.
Ah, got it. I have tried very hard to forget about 70s/80s Fiats. :-)
When is the last time you had a car undercoated?
I take your point, but the real answer is “when I lived the U. S. Midwest”, where they salt the roads. Since we moved to the milder climate of Washington state, even our ‘81 VW’s body is in great shape. But, yeah, in the 80s: straight from the dealer to the undercoat place.
i have a running 80s vehicle with over 400k kilometers (its a VW T3)
Survivorship bias. Try doing that with an Austin Metro, Citroen Visa, Fiat Strada.
On average modern cars are significantly better than what we had in the 80s
I had one too!
Mine had a Subaru engine, Mercedes wheels, Audi Drive train, a Porsche suspension, and brakes from a Toyota Highlander.
How did you keep your Volkswagen running?
20+ year old cars are much less safe than modern ones. I would strongly consider a newer car if I were you.
A 2006 car is pretty safe. It won't have gizmos like lane departure warnings or automatic braking but crash safety will be about as good as a new car, especially if you buy one that had good crash safety ratings at the time, such as Mercedes or Volvo.
The T4 is better than the T3 where you are the crumple zone.
Can you really or is it like the T1N Sprinters where yeah you technically can take the longblock to half a mil or more but you'll have replaced everything external to it twice over by then?
Damn I had no idea the T4 got produced that long. I drove a 1996 T4 with the good old Vorkammerdiesel many years ago - practically a tank.
"Runs and Drives" for $4300 is a bargain. All the other features were a bonus.
For a while my car buying strat was to buy a new Asian car and run it for 130,000 or more miles. In the pandemic though we had to get my son a car in a hurry so he could drive to work and new and gently used cars were hard to find so we discovered you can always get a pretty cool old car for that kind of money with the expectation that pretty soon you're going to spend about the purchase price in repairs; in our case it was just fine because once he had the job he had the money to pay for repairs himself and it is still a lot less than the payments on a new car.
$4K is about my limit for a car. You can do a lot better than "runs and drives" at that price point, but there's always a chance of getting a dud. Documented maintenance history really helps, but most people don't keep it.
Interesting that they replaced the central panel with something more traditional looking?
Thanks for sharing that, that was just a nice story.
I agree. Today has some very good stories on Hacker News, best day I can remember.
My kids call those “free candy vans” hah.
Fleet vehicles are generally not a terrible bet, they've at least been somewhat maintained.
That paintjob reminds me somewhat of the GTA San Andreas campervan of The Truth.
I can’t find details about their bankruptcy except some platitudes. How does such a business suddenly go broke?
A van that's seen a lot of highway miles and was owned by a large fleet is almost always a good bet. It's shuttle services who are skipping everything they can because "lol we're depreciating this over 3yr and then trading in" are who you gotta be worried about.
This is basically a story about who people cut from a filter bubble that circle jerk about Sprinters and Camrys are shocked to find that the most popular fleet van of the 1980s-2010 does in fact live up to it's value prop of delivering boring reliable service to business to which it is just a cost center to be minimized.