With all talk about vans to take the place of our vanagons....I've thought about inexpensive alternatives, since "inexpensive" was what brought me to Vans in the first place....first with my Splittie waaaay back and later when I got my 84 about 5yrs ago now... Lately, people have been paying rather large prices for vanagons...I don't think I would consider buying one now, at these prices, I'd be looking at the compact GM vans....Safari and Astro. Compared to that recent Syncro everyone was chattering about, you could get an AWD GM van for probably about $124.000 less, and then maybe put a few bucks into it and come out with a better value...I would think you could probably make a better vehicle with that kinda dough. Really, you can find very nice GM vans, 2wd, AWD, automatic or 4sp for very cheap compared to what is being asked lately for Vanagons. I would generalize and say the GM vans are going at about 10-20% of the cost of a vanagon......And the GM vans have great reputations for durability, for inexpensive maintenance, for towing capacity and for power and speed...Those with camper packages and pop tops are fairly common and almost any mechanic is familiar with the drivelines. I'm certainly not looking for a brand new vehicle to buy, one that might be what a Vanagon of 2013 would be...Imagine what VW would ask for one like that... But if my Vanagon ever really wears out, I'll probably replace it with a Safari or an Astro..because those are still a great value and with the savings over a "collectors Vanagon" I could make a great vehicle and still have enough left over to go use that sucker... |
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