We Need To Keep The Chevrolet Express Alive As The Last Traditional Full-Sized Van

You can’t walk into a movie theater today and watch Jerry Macguire. The sitcom Seinfeld is no longer a prime-time TV show, and “prime time” as a whole barely exists anymore. Sublime, No Doubt and other ska punk bands are no longer bothering us from most pop radio stations.

No, it’s not 1996 anymore, and there have been a lot of changes in the last thirty years (good Lord, does that make one feel old?). However, you can still visit a Chevrolet or GMC dealership and drive out in almost the same full-sized van that you could during the Clinton administration.

Something that’s worked that hard deserves some compensation for its decades of services to plumbing contractors and electricians nationwide. Instead of a gold watch and pension, let’s give it a makeover aesthetically, and maybe even use it to create a hybrid EV van without spending a billion dollars on something new.

Three Decades Of Hard Work

Big vans are like the custodians at your junior high school: very few people pay attention to these hard workers until they fail, start to get so old that people start to think that they can’t do the job, or a brand new and much younger replacement comes along.

To twenty-something me in the nineties, a “Chevy Van” was as constant as stuffing and gravy on Thanksgiving Day, mainly because the 1995 model was basically the same thing that was introduced in 1971. It had been everything from a Bell Telephone van to dens of iniquity with bubble windows and airbrushed murals from my earliest memories.

In late 1995, when I saw the new model for the first time in a parking lot with its wraparound taillight above the rear cargo doors, smoothed-out flanks, stylish door handles, and aerodynamic nose it was rather mind-blowing, like seeing your Aunt Betty replaced by some android replicant. The 1996 Express/Savannah seemed to follow the same principles of the earlier 1988 GMT400 pickup trucks; simple, functional aesthetics that were perfectly balanced and didn’t pretend to be anything they weren’t. The first Express/Savannah even had an entire front end almost lifted verbatim from the contemporary GMT400, either with composite lights or good old, sealed beams on lesser Cargo models.

Truth be told, the Express/Savannah has aged pretty well visually. It looks far less dated today than the previous model did in 1996 (even though that model was only a mere 25 years old at the time). The basic body is an extremely clean shape with minimal detailing; the 2024 models below are barely changed since 1996:

The Express/Savana could be made to look rather current and match the latest GM truck aesthetic, or really any look we want. Besides being fun there’s another big reason to try- let me explain.

Cheap Is Good

Nothing lasts forever, and reports are that the Express and Savanna are indeed on borrowed time. The traditional Dodge vans (which dated back to 1971) died in 1998 when then-Daimler Chrysler replaced them with the Mercedes Sprinter Vans. Ford’s E-Series traditional vans (which were redone in 1992) ceased being sold as standard vans in 2014, but you can still buy one as a stripped cab chassis to be used as something like a commercial vehicle or motorhome.

Within the next year or two these GM vans with basic chassis that date back to 1971 will likely be replaced by an all-new design or a modern EV similar to what we’ve seen from GM with the Brightdrop. It looks a bit like a me-too Rivian Amazon van, which is almost exactly what you’d expect.

I can understand the move, but this Brightdrop thing isn’t a REAL van, right? Traditional full-sized vans are an American institution; this Rivian/Canoo stuff just isn’t. At that same time, these Dustbuster-shaped Ford and RAM things are obviously taken right off the streets of Dusseldorf or Milan, so why should they ply the streets of Clevland? If you write FREE CANDY on the side of a Ford Transit or get thrown into the back of a RAM Promaster FIAT-thing or live in it down by the river, it doesn’t have the same feel as an old Econoline, does it?

Joking aside, there’s a real reason why something like the old Express should exist. It’s the same reason that companies like Lada and Yugo sold brand new examples of cars based on ancient designs in North America: they were dirt cheap. Up until recently, Stellantis did the same thing by offering its old 2009 era pickup as a bargain-priced RAM 1500 Classic to complement the newer design RAM 1500 they sold; you’d get a fully functional brand-new warrantied product at a cut-rate price.

Also, if you try to spec out an Express on Chevy’s website, you’ll see that it gets north of $50,000 rather quickly. The new Brightdrops are a relative steal at only $78,000 to start when compared to the Rivian Van, but that’s pricey.

Sure, it’s old, and a writer on some other car site called the Express “the worst vehicle they’d ever driven.” However, I rent these when I need to move big prototypes to clients, and it drives like a van; nothing more and nothing less. The Euro-inspired Ford and Stellantis ones I’ve sampled were a little better, but who cares? That car reviewer–who might be too young to have any real reference for what a true crap vehicle is–can talk about NVH and steering feel, but what if he or she suddenly owns a business and needs to buy three or four vans for delivery guys to run? I promise that price will suddenly be the most important factor.

Let’s look at the basic van one more time:

With such a blank canvas, we could really make the Express/Savana into almost anything we want. As an Autopian, I want some strange stuff.

Version 1: ExpressEV

Before we go off the rails, let’s start with a basic refresh of the Express/Savannah. I’ll add a nose similar to the Silverado EV, except (and this was a Jason Torchinsky request) the headlamps below the glowing upper daytime running light strips will be actual sealed beam units. You can see that I’ve also added new steel wheels, plastic rocker panel covers, painted the “A” pillars black, and added a “non glare” section to the hood. This is really just a very cheap trick to make the windshield appear to be more raked and larger.

In back, the body-colored side trims below the wraparound taillights change to grey or black plastic pieces that connect to the bumper and include LED taillights to create a back end that looks much like the Rivian Amazon van.

Why make the Express look so much like these electric vehicles? That’s because it would be electric; there’s plenty of room under the old van for batteries. However, I’m thinking more of a hybrid with a gasoline range extender. The idea is similar to the upcoming RAM Ramcharger EV with a V6 and two drive motors, where ICE engine doesn’t drive the wheels themselves.

We also don’t necessarily need a motor as large as the RAM is using to charge the batteries. In this GM version, the current gas Express motors would be replaced a small four-cylinder that will merely act as a range extender for charging. Our ExpressEV (pronounced Expressive) will naturally be much simpler with a single motor powering through the same driveshaft as before, since it will still be rear-drive only. Here’s a rough schematic (but you can see there’s plenty of extra room for even more batteries).

Having a range extender makes sense in a workhorse that just might not have time to stop and charge up between flower and salty snack deliveries.

Version 2: Heritage Edition

What if we didn’t try to update the look of the Express? Maybe even do the opposite and “backdate” it like some people do with Porsche 911s to make a newer car look like a much earlier model? We could recreate the kind of Chevy van they sang songs about and that Ponch and John chased in episodes of CHiPs!

The “Heritage” version of the Express would be just that. I’d use the first nose that van came with it 1971 since it’s the most iconic with the round lights surrounded by square apertures, but in my take those white frames would glow as daytime running lights. Other than that new grille, I’d do nothing else to it: that’s where you, the buyer, come into play. The owner of this one below lowered it, threw on some Rallye wheels with wide tires, installed a bubble window, and had a very interesting choice of art to place on the side.

If we wanted to do more, the back could get a similar treatment to the front, like all body-colored side and top trims, replacing the taillights with units that look like the seventies model:

Nothing quite like a vintage vehicle that really isn’t a vintage vehicle, though one could argue that the Heritage edition is really just a sort-of-vintage vehicle under a very-vintage-looking body.

Version 3: Express SS ZL1

Jason Torchinsky recently reported that the Express/Savana was the last car you could buy without a touch screen, and in the comments StillNotATony mentioned how much they wanted to see a high-performance SS version of this old van. Mercedes Streeter concurred that such a product would be highly desirable, and why wouldn’t it be? A true muscle car was often a body-on-frame setup with a big motor up front pumping power to live rear axle that hopped up and down when you hammered the gas: that’s this van all the way.

There’s room for a decent-sized supercharged V8 up front behind the Camaroesque nose we’ll put in place. Ground effects, wide rubber, big brakes and even a wing on the roof will complement the look. We could give it some decent seats up front, and that lump you see on top of the dash in front of the driver in the pic below would house a thin digital linear band tachometer and boost gauge to complement the relatively comprehensive gauges of the standard Express. Naturally, this fancier version would also have the double-DIN old-school radio Jason wrote around replaced by a Carplay screen.

You know it’ll be faster than a scalded cat, would do burnouts visible from space and if you take an exit ramp at speed the back end will shift out like two feet when the rear wheels hit a bump just like American cars did in days of old. That was always fun! Let’s face it- most of those vintage muscle cars handled like shit anyway, and they didn’t have the space of a Manhattan studio apartment behind them for cargo or even more seats like the A-Team van had (it must have been awful not being able to see out from back there). Mercedes Streeter might not be nuts for wanting one of these; it would make a perfect 22nd car for her.

Also, I saw that the pace car at next year’s Indianapolis 500 will be a Corvette for the umpteenth time in a row. It’s a different version from the previous years, but this is getting stale. Honestly, over the years some of the Indy support vehicles, including trucks, were just as interesting as the pace cars themselves.

I know that a Pace Van edition of the Express ZL1 would get more attention to the “greatest spectacle in racing” and put this high-powered van on the map with media outlets desperate for content:

Even if it couldn’t keep pace with the field as the actual pace car, it could certainly be a support or parade vehicle, and no matter how you spun it people would notice. Also, as a cargo van, it’s also one of the few pace vehicles where adding lurid graphics on the side doesn’t really destroy the car.

Last Van Standing

Give us a Brightdrop thing if you must, but with the tooling likely bought and paid for many times over, General Motors has nothing to lose by keeping the old van alive to sell alongside it. You might remember that GM dropped their full-sized B-Body sedan in 1996, while Ford continued to make the big Panther body for well over a decade more and reaped the success of having the livery and law enforcement market all to itself.  I mean, how many of you still hit the brakes when you see a white Crown Vic sedan or partially expect to get a black Town Car when you call for limo car service?

I’ve offered just three possible options to making this final traditional van even more useful and strangely fun, but you can probably think of many more. Maybe a C/K underpinned off-roader? What about a contemporary take on the old conversion vans, now hopefully without curtains, tufted seats and wood tissue box holders? For whatever reason, doing these mods to a traditional van instead of the Transit/Promaster variety seems more natural.

The Express van can be whatever you make it. Isn’t that what van culture is all about?

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