Which Van Would You Put To Work? 2004 Chevy Express vs 2011 Ford Transit

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that you’re starting a small business, mobile dog washing or antique furniture delivery or something, and you find yourself in need of a van. You don’t want to buy new, because who knows if the venture is going to be a success or not? In fact, since you already sunk a bunch of money into getting this off the ground, cheaper is better. Lucky for you, there are always a lot of cheap vans around, as big fleets replace older units that no longer suit their purposes. But what to get? Would you be better off with a big, traditional van, or one of the new, smaller, car-like models?

Our focus yesterday was on play rather than work, and we looked at a Chrysler rarity that needed some love to get it back on the road, and a beat-up Nissan that looked sketchy, but could be given a fun second life. By quite a wide margin, you took the Chrysler TC, despite the fact that you’d have to tow it home. The little Nissan NX was just too used up for most of you.

If I had the money to spend, and access to a car dolly, I’d be working out a plan to go get that TC tomorrow. That’s a hell of an opportunity for an ’80s Mopar fan like me, made all the better by that cushy Italian interior. And for those of you who say “it can’t be just the fuel pump, or they would have fixed it already,” I’m not so sure. Stuff happens. Life gets in the way. Projects languish. What starts out with the best of intentions often ends with someone better-equipped to take on your dead project handing you an envelope of cash and winching it onto a flatbed. Believe me, I know.

I started looking at work vans today because there’s one for sale right around the corner from me, and I walked past it again recently. It’s a Chevy Express, for sale for $3,500, just like one of today’s competitors – except it’s seriously rusty. The bottom eight inches of sheetmetal pretty much all the way around are just gone. It probably won’t surprise you to hear that it has been for sale for a long time. The writing on the window swears it “runs great,” and the rust might not be structural, but I’m not sure it matters. If you want a van like that, you want it to do work, probably at other people’s houses. You can’t show up to a client’s residence in something that leaves little piles of oxidation behind every time you close a door. No, if you’re in my neck of the woods, you’re far better off heading south, finding a rust-free van, and driving it back up here. With that in mind, let’s check out a couple of rust-free Texas vans, in two different sizes.

2004 Chevrolet Express 2500 – $3,500

Engine/drivetrain: 4.3-liter OHV V6, four-speed automatic, RWD

Location: Grand Prairie, TX

Odometer reading: 240,000 miles

Operational status: Runs and drives well

Here it is, the Methuselah of the American car market: the Chevy Express. This van has been in production for thirty years, and you can still walk into a Chevy dealership and buy a brand-new one today. If it ain’t broke, as they say, don’t fix it. No matter who you are or where you live in the US, chances are that some part of your house was built, repaired, remodeled, or serviced by someone who arrived in a Chevy Express. Its ubiquity is well-earned: this van just works, and it keeps working for a very long time. The seller has this van listed as a 3500 model, but it isn’t; my guess is that it’s a light-duty 2500.

Lots of different engines found their way into the doghouse of the Express over the years, but this one has the simplest: a 4.3-liter Vortec V6, backed by a 4L60-E automatic transmission. It’s a durable, reliable combination, and you can’t throw a rock without hitting a garage capable of working on it. Parts are cheap and widely available, and while you’ll probably end up rebuilding the transmission at some point, even when they start to slip they’ll go for a long time. This one, at 240,000 miles, has probably already been overhauled once, and the seller says it runs and drives great. Keep up the maintenance, and you can get a lot of years out of this thing yet.

One thing you can’t expect out of a work van is luxury. This van has simple vinyl seats that are definitely showing their age, and the seller says it is equipped with neither air conditioning nor a radio. Someone was seriously trying to save money when they ordered this van. I wouldn’t do it now, but I’ve suffered through plenty of summers without AC. But no radio? For 240,000 miles? How is that even possible? What the hell did they do, just sit there? First order of business for me would be to get some tunes in this thing, by any means necessary.

It’s a little banged-up outside, but I don’t think anyone expects a work van to be flawless. Just presentable. It’s white, of course, and some of the paint has peeled away. Of course. I do find it strange that, even though it has the base engine and no options inside, it has factory-looking alloy wheels. Seems like a strange place to spend money; if there’s any vehicle I would expect to see plain steelies on, it’s this.

2011 Ford Transit Connect XLT – $2,900

Engine/drivetrain: 2.0-liter DOHC inline-4, four-speed automatic, FWD

Location: Dallas, TX

Odometer reading: 183,000 miles

Operational status: Runs and drives well

Full-size work vans are great beasts of burden, but they take up a lot of space, and they aren’t very efficient. If you don’t need all that capability, you might be interested in something smaller. All of the Big Three US automakers offered cargo versions of their minivans to fill that role, including the various small Ford vans with names ending in “-star.” After the demise of those vans, Ford began importing the Transit Connect from Europe to fill the same role. Companies with lighter-duty needs jumped on the Transit, and it has become a fixture on US roads ever since. Too bad Ford stopped importing it in 2023. Your only option to get a Transit Connect now is to find a used one, like this.

The Transit Connect is basically just a Ford Focus with a van body. That’s not a bad thing, though; the Focus was a good little car, and the car-like FWD unibody architecture means this van drives a lot nicer than the big, cumbersome truck-based vans. It’s powered by a Duratec 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine, available only with a four-speed automatic. Hey, at least it isn’t that PowerShift nightmare they put in the Focus. This Transit has 183,000 miles on it, and the seller says it runs and drives great.

Ford used the craziest scheme to circumvent the 25% “Chicken Tax” on light trucks when importing the Transit. It imported the vans as passenger vehicles, with rear windows, rear seats, and seat belts, then took them to a factory in Baltimore and had the extra seats and belts removed, and the glass replaced by solid steel panels, and sold them as cargo vans. At first the extra parts were just recycled upon removal, but later Ford started shipping them back to Europe and re-using them. This one has windows in the sliding doors and in the back, so it’s not quite as cave-like as some vans. The front seats and passenger area show some wear, but nothing you wouldn’t expect from a hard-working vehicle.

Outside, it still has a partial wrap from its previous owner, a florist in New Mexico. How a flower van got from Roswell to Dallas, I don’t know; my guess is that it was sold at an auction or something. The wrap should be removable, but you’d probably want to take it to a sign shop who deals with vehicle wraps. That stuff is a pain in the ass to try to remove yourself without the proper tools.

What size van you pick depends on what kind of work you need it to do, but there is a lot of overlap here. You can haul a lot of tools and stuff in either one, and they both look like they have some life left. The question, then, is: do you pick the van that can do anything, even if it’s more than you really need, or do you go for the smaller option, and save some gas?