Is it a story when a vehicle isn’t changed at all? With the Chevy Express, it is. At this point, the exciting thing is to watch it go from model year to model year without a single thing being updated, like a woolly mammoth would refuse to go extinct. We’re talking about a full-size van that was launched in 1996 and whose last significant update was done in 2003. Remember 2003? I barely had my driving license back then.
The Express is sold to fleets and customers who clearly know what they want: one or a dozen more of the same. There’s nothing to stop it, any tentative electrified successors seem to whimper out of its way, and it keeps selling. In fact, 2025 was even the best sales year for the Express in the 2020s, with 58,578 units shifted. The lowest point was in 2020, with 40,659 Expresses sold. The 2025 figure even matches sales in the late ‘00s, with the Express selling 60-80,000 units per year in the 2010s. In the first quarter of 2026, some 12,500 have been sold. Sales figures of the Express’s GMC sibling, the GMC Savana seem more volatile, with some 42,500 sold in 2024, half that in 2025, and 2233 vans so far in 2026.
For 2027, the powertrain options continue to be the 4.3-liter LV1 V6 with 276 horsepower and 298 lb-ft of torque. The 6.6-litre optional L8T V8 produces 401 horsepower and 464 lb-ft of torque. Both units are paired with the heavy-duty 8-speed autobox.
The cheapest 2026 Express Cargo Van starts at $41,800 without destination charges; the V8 upgrade is two grand well spent. While the 2003 Express was priced at $22,550 at its cheapest, looking at inflation calculators tells us today’s prices are almost exactly the same with inflation taken into account, as $22,550 in 2003 is $41k today. 2027 pricing is yet to be announced, but don’t expect it to change too much.
Like Brian wrote last October, the Express and Savana don’t even have that much competition when it comes to getting something comparable. Ford hasn’t sold passenger or cargo versions of the E-series aka Econoline for over a decade, as they were discontinued for 2015 and only cutaway chassis versions remain in production. The E-Series is even more of a dinosaur than the Express, as the basics date back to 1992, with a lot of the earlier third generation carried over then.
The Ram ProMaster and the Ford Transit are unibody vans, so there are use cases where the Express towers over them – towing, for example. Of course, sometimes you also want a unibody van for the way it drives. Today’s fuel prices are also a valid reason to seek out a van that’s more frugal than the Express.
GM Authority notes there’s ongoing speculation about a possible Express refresh or modernization, but one of the things GM can do is keep building the vans the way they’ve been for a long time. The last revision the Express and Savana have received have been transmission updates for 2024. Given the third-generation Chevy vans they actually replaced in 1996 had been in production since 1971, it just makes sense that these things are built for decades.
The Express and Savana were also the last vehicles to feature sealed beam headlights, because of course they were. They lost the sealed beam units for the 2018 model year in favour of more modern lighting. The last time the nose changed was the 2003 facelift, which was in fact substantial with a higher hoodline, giving a sort of “raised eyebrow” look to the front.
Earlier this decade, the electric GM BrightDrop delivery van was touted as a possible successor for the Express, but as its sales were counted in singular thousands, it was canceled due to lack of demand. As GM stated back in October:
The commercial electric delivery van market developed much slower than expected with the plant operating below capacity and production suspended since May 2025. A changing regulatory environment and the elimination of tax credits in the United States have made the business even more challenging. The decision is part of broader adjustments the company is making to North America EV capacity.
In a way, the Express gives you a steel enclosure where it’s always 1996 (as long as you don’t look at the dash too closely, as that has been updated once, in 2003).
You can go back to a mindset where there only had been one Tom Cruise Mission Impossible movie, and the Batman Forever soundtrack sounds fresh and inventive (let me be real here, it still does. I think Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me is U2’s best song, There Is A Light is some of Nick Cave’s best work, and I still don’t understand what the hell Kiss From A Rose is about).
But you have to use Bluetooth to play the soundtrack, because CD players were discontinued for these vans for 2022. Why can’t things just stay the same?
(Images: GM)
I worked at a telecom and they had a bunch of the Chevy express vans, and the gas and brake pedals were on/off switches, they held up pretty good.