Ah, the cargo van. With the demise of the Ford Econoline, the full-size American cargo van has finally disappeared into history, but not so long ago the Chevrolet Express, GMC Savana, and the long-in-the-tooth Dodge Ram Van were in full competition with Ford’s rolling box for not just sales or fleet orders, but for relevancy. Right about the turn of the century most of the cargo vans underwent some sort of reinvention as the manufacturers struggled to figure out how to sell them. Conversion vans might bring up horrifying images of overstuffed velour hell and bad tape-stripe jobs, but one company had the kind of conversion van that we could get behind in half a second: Quigley, who has specialized in converting cargo vans into four-wheel-drive off-roading surprises since 1972. In this look back from 2000, Motorweek took a look at a Quigley-converted Chevrolet Express and three thoughts entered our heads as we watched it:
One: it’s amazing that the Express is doing as well as it is in the off-roading scenes.
Two: picturing the van set up as a short-stay camper is suddenly really appealing, and
Three: Who in the hell picked out those wheels?!
Quigley makes some neat hardware. They had a 4×4 converted Transit van at Easter Jeep Safari this past year, it looked great.
Fedex Express has some of these for the rural country routes, some in Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri authough most have been demoted to ramp vehicles or scrapped.