Someone Shipped The Greatest Diesel Minivan On Earth To America And One Of You Needs To Buy It

Red alert; red alert! The Austria-built minivan of your dreams — a vehicle you always thought would be outside of your grasp due to it never having been sold in the U.S. — is for sale. In Ohio! And someone whose name is not David Tracy needs to eject $2,200 from an AMT and slap that those 22 bills into the current owner’s hand. Because there’s no better way to spend $2,200. Trust Me. 

In 2020, my friend Andreas Aron from Germany bought a 1994 Chrysler Voyager Diesel 5-speed on my behalf after I’d been asking him to be on the lookout for one. You see, I grew up in a first-generation Voyager minivan, and I recall my dad rowing through its stickshift when I was a kid. I wanted one of my own, but I didn’t just want any Voyager — I wanted the ultimate.

That van is the diesel model built in Graz, Austria and never sold in the U.S.

Technically the diesel manual Chrysler minivan that I bought is a second-gen, but that is based on the first-gen that my dad brought me home from the hospital in, and when I first sat in the 500 Euro van that Andreas had bought for me, the vehicle immediately felt familiar.

Anyway, that van became a legend, as I repaired it during the pandemic when most people were in lockdown and had nothing better to do than watch a single, grown-ass man fly to Europe to fix a 250,000 mile minivan.

That machine has been on some legendary trips, including this one to Belgium:

This one to Sweden:

And this one to Istanbul:

But the most popular story about the van wasn’t any of those road trips, it was this piece on what it was like getting that ol’ beast through Germany’s incredibly rigorous “TUV” inspection:

Anyway, all of this is to say: The minivan exceeded my already-lofty expectations. It has never let me down, and is in fact my dad’s daily driver since his 2011 Chevy Equinox’s 2.4-liter EcoTec decided to blow up.

All of this matters because of this:

That’s right: Someone imported the greatest minivan ever to the U.S. That “someone” was apparently in the military, as the seller told me over Facebook:

Guy was in the military and had it shipped here. I guess that our government gives a good deal on shipping vehicles to soldiers.

Indeed they do! The military will ship a car for free for service members. That someone would import this one as their sole “free” car given that it must have been at least 25 years old at the time (since it wouldn’t be allowed into the U.S. until it was 25, per the 25 year import rule) is a bit surprising to me, but maybe they were big fans of the van?

I mean, I get it. Mine has been unstoppable since I got it back on the road.

This one has under 200,000 miles on the clock, while mine has 260,000. That might have you thinking “Oh, then this thing has lots of life left in it,” but the truth is that mine had its cylinder heads replaced sometime around 2009. They tend to crack, and I’d be worried if this van’s heads were the originals.

Or maybe I’d just say screw it and give up the two grand. I mean, it’s a diesel manual Chrysler minivan in America. It’s priceless, really.

h/t: Josh!