With mind pretty much made up, it was time to turn casual browsing into serious shopping. With such a specialized vehicle, simply looking in local dealerships would be a waste of time. Any random drive-by would show that they carried nothing close.
That it had worked back in 1994, when I bought Blue
Man. I was not
even actually shopping for a new van at the time.
Max had recently clicked off his 279,000th
mile, though,
and I knew he had his eye on retirement.
I was on my way home from Lewis Bar & Grill in Norwood MA, and I was looping around the rotary over US-1 to venture north on that same road, when something caught my eye in the lot of the Cadillac dealership on my right. It looked like a big blue conversion van, and it looked really nice.
Needing a second look, I bypassed my ramp and took a second lap around the rotary, but this time I veered off towards the dealership. Sure enough, that Blue Chevy van was a beauty. The sticker showed this van was “priced to sell”. I peered through the driver side window, looking for mileage. The odometer appeared to read 9,996. Are you kidding me? Not even 10K??
Long story short: I bought it two days later, trading in mighty Max. Before leaving the lot, I edged Blue Man up to Max and touched bumpers together, passing the Dodge’s spirit into his successor.
And Max himself, that noble stallion, drew to
himself among several on the lot on my very first day of
“looking around.” I
pulled in because I saw a few vans.
Young and budget-wary, I walked past the more
“gaudy” ones with their running boards, high tops and
shocking sticker prices, and 
there
he sat. simple
but beautiful, the Ivory Girl of conversion vans.
No make-up, just pure good looks.
Basic exterior striping gave him a subtle touch of
style, and the complementary shades of grey fabric on walls,
ceiling and seats had “understated class” all over it.
I needed to see no more. I was back two days later to buy him, and never once regretted it.
So, yeah, it happened a couple of times, but this search was going to require scouring the Internet.
Internet Auto Shopping did not daunt me at all, actually. I had had crazy good luck there as well. When I purchased ZDog in 2013, he was the very first van I saw. I was at home, without any set plan about a new vehicle. I still had Moby, though he was close to 200,000 and had many ailments. I also had a 1991 Buick Century – I know, right? A lifelong vanman in a Buick?? – that had come to me when Mom passed away. It drove just fine and all, but it was a car. A freaking car. Ugh. It had a long hood. I had to sit down into it instead of stepping up into the van. I couldn’t see over cars in front on me anymore. It just didn’t fit. I still cringe thinking about it.
I was passing by my desk when my buddy Whim tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, “Why not check out AutoTrader.com, just to see what a used van would cost?” Whim usually does right by me, so I logged on.
Boom. First
van, at the top of the first page, was ZDog.
The photos were very flattering.
Mannnn, did he look good, especially compared to
the advance degree of Shab that Moby was showing all around. The price, $6000,
looked good too, the mileage (67,000) was decent, and the
dealership was in Bradenton, halfway up Florida’s west
coast. That’s
still 350 miles from Key West, but at least it’s the same
state, and that’s a victory for Internet car shopping.
I thought about it for a day or so, then gave them a call and set up a time to come up and take a test drive. Life conspired against me though, throwing complications in my way, and I had to call them and cancel. Damn, I thought, the one that got away…
Two weeks later, Whim suggested I take another look at AutoTrader. Hey, the green Dodge is still there at the top of the list, and the price has been dropped to $5500. Whaddyaknow??
I called and scheduled another ride. This time, I was able to make it. Right before I started the trip, I had checked the web site one more time, just to make sure it hadn’t been sold out from under me. It was still there, yes, and the price had dropped yet another $500, to just $5K!
The test drive went well, and I said I wanted it. The salesman took me inside and did up the paperwork. The Buick trade-in basically just negated all the preparation charges, so that was a wash. He started to go down the itemized list, “OK, we start with the sticker price of $5,500…”
“Wait, that’s not right.” I said.
He was not just the salesman, but also in charge of Internet sales, so, if anyone should have known the price, it was him, and the look on his face said so.
I pulled out my iPad Mini, which was still set on that page. I handed it to him and said, “The price dropped to $5000 yesterday.”
He was exasperated. Ex-freaking-asperated. Apparently, they just wanted to get this damn van off their damn lot, damn it. It had been there awhile, so they had applied an automatic price drop every two weeks till someone bought it. That drop had kicked in the day before, and my guy did not even know it. Sweet.
Maybe he could have been happy for me for getting a better deal, but his expression said that he had written everything up in such a way that the extra $500 was coming right out of his commission. Oh well. =)
Van Shopping: Near Misses
So, with it-was-meant-to-be scores like that , I entered this late-2019 Internet auto shop with optimism.
Primary target:
It was a pretty specific search. There were MANY ProMasters out there, about 95% of them white.
The passenger van style, with those big windows that run the whole length of the van, tended to be about $10K more than same-year cargo vans, so that option was fading fast.
I did like the look, but the first thing I’d do with a passenger van would be to take the “passenger” out of it by removing all the seats. The walls and ceiling and floor would all be fully upholstered already, so that would have been a plus, but there would still be thousands of dollars of work to do to get it into Road Life shape, so I needed to find one in the same range as its cargo cousins, and none of them were even close.
ProMaster Conversion Vans looked fantastic, but to be honest, I barely gave them a look. Price was waaaay out of my range and drooling over them just would’ve discouraged me.
Anyway, I was not after the finished sculpture; I was after the granite block. How much of a masterpiece it would become was up to me!
Yeesh. So pompous. STFU and search, will ya, Ricko?
Right.
White cargo van after white cargo van after white cargo van adorned my screen. If the mileage was low, the price was too high. If the price was good, the mileage was too high. If both looked good, the damn thing was diesel.
There was one I
found on some Tennessee dealership’s site:
2017 white passenger van, less than 25,000 miles,
and only
$13K. I
did a triple take on that one.
What was wrong with that picture??
Had to be something!
I called them up and the woman was pretty vague about it. She couldn’t tell me a whole lot because it was in Texas at the moment. (Texas?) She asked me to call back the next day.
After I hung up, a closer scrutiny of the photos showed me an oddity. Every other ProMaster had either the ram’s head logo, or the RAM letters on the grill. This one had a Z. A freaking Z? Was this Zorro’s van? Further examination revealed some small letters on the back door: Zenith Electric. OK, now, why would an electrical contractor have a 15-passenger window van instead of a big box full of equipment and supplies? So, I googled it.
Zenith is a company that took a stab at having rental fleets of electric passenger vans to use as shuttles in some of the big cities. The idea being that the range did not have to be all that far, since they would only be making short trips.
This PM was electric! And the woman didn’t even know it!
I called her back and asked her if it was electric. She put me on hold and asked a salesperson. The salesperson said, no, it wasn’t, it had a gas-powered V-6. WT-effing-F now?
There was NO WAY an electric van would work for road life. Not a chance. But if it wasn’t electric, this $13K price tag was a total steal. So, I emailed her that night, imploring her to check again, and presented the whole Zenith pile of evidence, including a link to their website. She emailed me back the next day: “Yes, it is electric.” That was it. No, “oops”. No “sorry”. Not even a “Are you still interested?”
My return email was almost as succinct: “Tell your salesperson he (or she) is a fucking dumbass.”
And the quest veered back to its original course.
Google searches showed not just vans available at dealerships, or from private sellers, but a good number on E-Bay. E-Bay? Really? I would never have thought of buying a vehicle on that auction site. But I dove in and took a look.
One grabbed me immediately. It was a ProMaster Conversion Van and it was gorrrgeous. All white, inside and out, and plussssssh. It was a 2016, with 60,000 miles, for $29K: outside of all three parameters. But it was gorrrgeous. I scrolled through all the photos and it totally seduced me. I know I had said “not white”, but this was gorrrrgeous white, not plain white.
There was nothing tickling my A-list yet, and I caved. Maybe I could “make it work” living in a conversion van. Maybe I don’t need all those other things. What the heck, I lived in an even-smaller conversion van for seven months before.
The dealer was a good bit north of Orlando, almost 500 miles from here, so a test drive was going to take some planning: a day or so off from work, almost $200 in gas and tolls. Yeesh.
But it was gorrrrgeous, with 4 r’s! Have I mentioned that?
I called on a Wednesday to talk about it and they promptly dropped the price to $26,500. I set up a test drive on a Saturday early afternoon, which meant doing most of the driving the night before. I got pretty far up by late Friday afternoon, and stopped to call the dealer just to verify. I was put on hold. After several minutes, the woman that I had made the appointment with came on.
“Ohhh, I’m sorry,” she said, not sounding sorry, “that van has been sold.”
You have to be fucking kidding me. “You knew I was coming all the way up from Key West, and you DIDN’T CALL TO TELL ME?!?!?” I was angry. Furious even. I let her begin to stammer out a response, then hung up on her before my restraint failed me utterly. My steering wheel bore the brunt of my rage.
Safe
to say that one It Was Not Meant To Be.
Ehh, I didn't want white anyway...
Then there was the Winnebago. Yes, a Winnebago. A 2001 Rialta. 88,000 miles, tons of goodies, meticulously kept, only being sold because they upgraded. This thing was loaded. It had every appliance you could think of. It might’ve even had a freaking dishwasher and clothes dryer. I’m guessing they got a crap offer for trade-in and decided they could do better selling it themselves.
Bids were stupidly low. But, as beautiful as this home-on-wheels was, there were several good reasons why I would not want it:
[a] it was 20 years old – well-kept, but still, 20 years old;
[b]
88K was enough
miles to suggest that a lot of repairs and new parts were in
the near future; 
[c] the interior height was about 5’6”, not awful, but I’d be doomed to a life of crouching or slouching;
[d] much of the mechanical make-up was Mercedes, meaning replacement parts that would be more expensive and less readily available (i.e., more down time while you wait for the part to come in), and the chance of finding a mechanic in the wild who had enough expertise on foreign parts was not as high as, say, if it was a Dodge;
[e] it was 23’ long, meaning that it would not fit in regular parking spaces, and, technically, would not even be allowed in the Old Town section of Key West, where I live; and, finally,
[f] it was in California, so add airfare and the travel costs of bringing it home, plus a week off from work to do so.
Despite all that, I put in a bid. That childhood I-will-own-a-Winnebago-someday proclamation echoed in my head. The bid was a tiny bit less stupid: $8900. No way would that stand up.
Next day, there was a $9400 bid. I should’ve bagged it then and there, but my childhood would not be denied for less than ten grand. I did $9950, with that extra $50 just to show ‘em I was not to be trifled with.
I answered one more counterbid with $10,800, almost hoping I’d lose. It stood until the final hour when some joker bid $11K. I had time to answer, but I declined. I let it drive away, and felt a tiny bit relieved.
Apparently, there was no minimum bid, and the RV went for that price, because the ad went away and never came back. I have occasionally kicked myself over not getting a fully-stocked RV for under $12,000, but the reasons detailed above remind me that it was a sound decision. That inner voice will just have to STFU.
Van
Shopping: The Purchase
About a week later, a new E-bay listing came up.
2018 cargo van. Good.
159” wheelbase, high roof, automatic. Good. Good. Good.
23,852 miles. Very good.
$24,500. Heyyy, not bad!!
Color: True Blue Pearl. Ooooh, this thing looks niiice!
It was hard to tell from the pics, but “True Blue Pearl” looked just like the Midnight Metallic Blue that I had had two of my vans painted back in the day. I totally LOVE that color!
Location: New Jersey. Oh. Not so great. 1500 miles away. Ouch.
Interior: a “permanent” partition between front seats and cargo hold, and floor-to-ceiling shelving on both walls back there. It had been a fleet van for a plumbing and electric contractor. No windows in the sides or back. This thing was a huge, padlocked, tool box.
The high bid at the moment was an absurdly low $8000. WTF, I figured, and threw in a $9000 on the spot. When I checked back a couple hours later, the leading bid was up to $10,000. The auction had a few days to go, so I shrugged and searched elsewhere.
On the final day, the bid was still just $12,000. I dove in and read all the fine print. Maybe there was something that I didn’t know. Aha, indeed there was: the van had been in a front-end accident, but it had been completely repaired. It currently had a salvage title. Close inspection of the photos showed clearly readable ghosts of the contractor’s vinyl lettering, with scratches and over-scrubbed finish all around them. Hmmmm.
But this van was the right size, right style, right age, right miles, and right color. I couldn’t let someone take it for that little money. I threw out $13K. That was countered almost instantly. Apparently, my rival bidder was also online.
OK, fine. Have at you, knave! $15,100,
just to piss you off.
$15,600 back at me.
$16,100. Your turn, Ace.
$17,000.
Hmmmm. Now, he had me thinking. This van was up in New Jersey, after all, and I had not even seen it for real, let alone driven it. I couldn’t exactly buzz up for a test drive.
Bah. It’s yours, anonymous rival. May it serve you well.
The search moved on, with more and more white vans. I should say that I was not totally blind to white vans. I’ve worked for 12 years for a company that does vehicle graphics, so it would not have stayed white for long. Also, Max and Moby, my two most noble conversion vans, were white. But, for some reason, it just did not sing this time.
The Christmas season came, and the search got back-burnered for a while. Zdog was still rolling along, so there was no real rush. He was creaking and groaning on trips to the mainland, sounding very tired. He was at 160,000 miles and past his prime. Plenty of small things showed signs of wear, and several things did not work anymore, including the heater. Heater? Who needs a heater in Key West? Ha.
Yeah, that’s fine as long as you stay in Key West. [Foreshadowing.]
Well, January came, and I resumed my hunt. Nothing in E-Bay filled the bill, nor AutoTrader or any of the other sites. Then, I saw a link for “E-Bay Auto” a specific branch that dealt solely with automotive sales, apparently. Why this was a thing, I did not know. Having an Auto category on regular E-Bay seemed like it should be sufficient.
But I clicked on it, typed in my make, model, and style, and … heyyyy, that’s the blue NJ van! It’s back! Hi, Big Blue!
The ad had an email address, so I sent them a query about the availability. They responded the next morning saying, yes, it was still available because it had not met the minimum acceptable bid the last time.
Aha. Ace’s $17K was not good enough after all, I guess.
Somehow assuming that it was Destiny that brought this van and me back together, I decided to just buy the damn thing.
I fudged around a little, of course, putting in an $18,500 bid. Denied. $19,000. Nuh-uh. $19,500, no. $19,626, no. $19,800, nope. $19,900, nope and nope. Arrrrgghh. I knew what was going to happen. Grrrr. I wanted my sub-20 pipe dream.
Then the word "trade-in" popped into my head. Eureka! I clicked in the $20,000 bid and ding-ding-ding, accepted!
Sweet. Now I had to drive to Jersey to get it. In a badly groaning, fading-fast van. With no heater. On February 1st. Ugh.
But ZDog made it! I froze my behind off, and the Z was
howling like a dying bloodhound by the time we arrived, but
he got me there. I thought he was going to pull a 
Bluesmobile and
fall apart as soon as I pulled out the key. I was
relieved that I liked the PM because I didn’t know if the Z
would have made it back to FL.
I laid down $20K in cash, and took back $800 for the trade, and the deal was done. While the grease monkeys removed the shelving and partition, I unpacked ZDog and said my very fond goodbyes.
I also had them charge up the AC.
“In February???”
“Dude, I’m driving back to Key West.”
An envious “Oh.”
They finished up, I took possession and wheeled the big boy southward. Less than an hour later, I was headed back northward. The van would not exceed 70 MPH. Clearly, this would not do.
Some
kind of Speed Limiter had been activated when the ex-owner
purchased his new fleet – to keep his drivers behaved, I
reckon – but nobody knew about it.
Nor did the boys at my dealership know how to
adjust it in the van’s computer.
They gave a noble effort, but could not access the right
codes.
Finally, on my salesman's suggestion, I went down to the new Chryler/Dodge/Jeep/RAM dealership a few miles down the road. One by one, three mechanics brashly set to it with their computers only to be foiled. The fourth mechanic set aside his official RAM/Jeep analysis interface gizmo, and took out and plugged in his iPhone instead. He did a few taps on an app and went, “Ohhhh, here ya go! OK, it can be set for 55, 65, 70, 77 or unlimited. Whaddya want?”
I gave him a look that said, “I want to be in Florida tonight.”
He nodded with a smile, “Unlimited it shall be. All set. Have nice trip!” Before I could even offer him a tip, he shut the door and walked inside.
On I-95 south, we hit 90 a couple of times, and the van was loving it. The harness was off and he was galloping free. I felt like he was a Rescue Van, claimed from the pound after having had an abusive owner.
Well, his days as a laborer are done. Highway cruisin’, National Parks, solar power, comfortable furnishings, and a life of modest leisure are in his future.
I knew we were gonna get along jusssst fiiine.
BTW, there was one thing the dealer lied about: the title. I had asked the salesman, Mark, on the phone about the salvage title. He brushed that off with a promise that by the time I got up there, it would have a clean title.
As I was signing the sales agreement, I paused to ask about the title. He claimed it was in process, but had not arrived yet; he would FedEx it down to me as soon as it got there.
Two weeks later, I had to make a Mark-WTF-is-my-title? phone call. Oh, as luck would have it, it had just now arrived and he was shipping it out to me. Right.
Two days after that, I opened the FedEx envelope and found … a SALVAGE TITLE! I knew nothing about such a document, but I found out as soon as I went to the DMV. They would not let me register the vehicle with a Salvage Title. Even though a sticker on the windshield showed that it had passed its repair inspection in Virginia (where the plumber was based) I had to have it inspected in Florida (freaking thieves), and the nearest certified place was in Miami, 155 miles away. Until then, I was driving an unregistered and uninsured vehicle. Thanks a pantload, Mark, you douche.
Even there, I got shit. It cost $120 for this bullshit process. Some 19-year-old took about a minute to look under the hood – if he even did that (I wasn’t allowed to be in the garage during the “inspection” – and came back in and nodded disinterestedly to his co-worker. I’d bet anything he just looked at the Virginia sticker and declared his work here was done.
Then they told me they couldn’t complete the process because their boss wasn’t there and he was the only one who could notarize the document.
I was a wasp’s whisker away from losing it all over their sorry asses, and I think the female could tell, because she suddenly acted with some haste and called up the UPS store to see if they could notarize it.
I had to drive there and drive back – still not street legal – before finally consummating the sale. What a freaking nightmare.
If you ever get offered a vehicle with a Salvage Title, DEMAND that they clear it before to make the buy.
Nuff sed.
Naming the Van
Only
thing left to do was to name him.
Ya gotta name your car, right?
I mean, I do.
Always have, since my very first one, a 1962 Dodge
Dart – with a push-button automatic on the dash! – that I
got for $20 as a high school junior.
That was the Hawkmobile, based on the colors being
kinda like our school colors (blue and gold).
Then there was (test my memory here):
1966 Plymouth Belvedere (hand-me-down) from Mom: “BVD”.
1969 Ford Mustang: “Sally” (duh)
A couple of shitboxes that I don’t even
remember, then my string of vans, as we discussed
before: The Roadhouse, The Moose, The Terp (a green
Dodge passenger van that I did not even deem worthy of the
list since i only had it a few months. It did,
however, carry the same interior "furniture" as the first 2
vans had), Spuds, Max, The Penthouse, Blue Man, Moby, and
ZDog.
Max was named Max for his maximal space, and this PM was even maxxer than Max had been. One of my prime attractions to him was his color. So, I already had a Max, and I already had a Blue Man (named after Blue Man Group). I couldn't repeat names, but I could combine them: hence, Blue Maxx (with the 2nd "x" because he's the second Maxx).
So, with the BUY completed, it was time to start The Build....
Plan
Fan
Insulation Rear
Windows Driver's Desk Sub-Floor
Solar Panels Trunk
& Bed
Upper Deck Mid-Van Windows Sink Dresser Desk Walls Ceiling Floor Doors Extras
Who's Rick?
Vehicle
The Build Power
Up Gizmos
Camping Rix Pix RAMblings