Poised at the Precipice

Hi, we’re back. Miss us? In our last installment, we were in El Salvador and writing about Nicaragua. Sorry we petered out at the end, there. We can blame it all on Joe, who wanted to surprise his friends by returning unannounced. So, once we picked our return date, rather than just keeping quiet about it, we stopped posting altogether. Bad us, we’ll try to do better this time.

Now, after having talked about camper-van trips for the past eight years, we’re getting the itch again. And today, after several weeks/months of research and homework, we visited our friendly neighborhood Ford dealer. We met with a somewhat cantankerous, but very knowledgeable, salesperson, and ended up putting a deposit down on a new van. Woo and hoo.

It wasn’t that difficult to decide to buy a new van, rather than a used one. Once we settled on the Ford Transit over a Dodge ProMaster or a Mercedes Sprinter or a Nissan NV, we found
• there aren’t that many used ones available,
• the price advantage is not all that compelling, and
• finding the right set of features and options is very hit-and-miss.

The van that made the cut is a 2021 Transit 350, long frame (148” wheelbase), high roof, and elongated body, with all-wheel drive, and an EcoBoost engine (turbo-charged). Those were the must-have options (well, not the year, but the rest of it). This eliminated 95% of the used vans we found, so here we are, ordering a new one. There’s a whole raft of other options and features, but that’s the gist of it.

Since we’re outfitting it as a camper, we got the Cargo model, instead of the Passenger Van (seats 15) or the Crew Van (seats 5, with room for lots of gear). We both liked Green Gem, but in 2021 that color is discontinued. Our second choice was the new Kapoor Red, but that was discontinued in December. So we ordered Blue Jeans, a nice deep blue. Readers with long memories will recall that Rocinante was blue. It’ll be fine.

Here are a couple of renderings of a 2020 model from the Ford website.

These vans take up a lot of space, so most dealerships don’t have many (or any) on the lot. Our salesperson rounded one up for us to test drive: a long-wheelbase Passenger van, but not with the elongated body, with a medium roof and a naturally-aspirated engine. Not quite, but close. The visibility is spectacular, and it handles quite nicely. The power is reasonable, but I’m glad we’re getting the more powerful engine, with all the weight we’ll be adding to it. Overall, we liked it plenty.

And here’s the kicker: under current circumstances (various severities of COVID, chip shortages, bad weather, and sunspot activity), it’s going to take 12-14 weeks to get it. Middle of May. Sigh.

In the mean time, we’ll be doing more research, making drawings, buying components and parts, and planning this thing to a fare-thee-well. And that’s as it should be. Nothing like fate stepping in to (strongly) encourage you to do it the right way the first time.