What van? £4k budget

[jon-]

A friend has asked some van advice, and as I know precisely zero about them I thought I'd put it to the PH massive.

The budget is 4k, and the cargo is sometimes boxes, sometimes a couple of motocross bikes so don't rule out lwb / high top.

The usuals have been thrown about:

Mercedes vito
Vauxhall Vivaro
Renault Traffic
Ford transit

He likes the look of the Mercs the best, but to quote: "I like the merc ones but I don’t want to find out that the 57 plate ones work fine till 50k miles and then turn in to a rusty old turd, all the wheels fall of and the floor falls out and we end up like flint stone characters on the way home from motocross."

Any suggestions

[TOENHEEL]

I would pick the Merc, yes the older ones rust like something not right but the engines i've seen in a few mates vans seem to run forever if maintained!

[Diffy]

Sprinter ?

Look after them and service them properly and no hassle, my Dad has 150k miles on a 07 515cdi.

[Diffy]

Oops double post.

[spats]

Mercedes vito: pre 04 rust is massive issue. Gearbox stiff, engines are expensive to fix. RWD so you loose a low load floor and therefore internal height.

Vauxhall Vivaro and Renault Traffic: same van. gearboxes made of toffee and chewing gum. 50k and they will bust. normally third starts to grind then reverse fails. not bad apart from that.

Ford transit: out of your choices I would say its the best option. Cheap, tonnes of options, loads of choice. not bad vans at all. Just make sure things like flywheel isnt vibrating and the engines sound and not knocking it ass off etc.

Personal choice would always be a VW transporter. But I love them so I'm biased! try and buy private as they tend to be single driver vans, these are way better treated than pool vans.

[Dale H]

I'd tell him to look at a transporter too, not a bad van to drive over long distances and it should cope with a couple of bikes.

[Vytalis]

Renault Master - had a hitop LWB for ferrying MX bikes around and it did the job perfectly. Much better than the previous Citroen 1.9 SWB which was a little pedestrian to say the least...

[matchmaker]

Transit - the 08 plate minibus I drive has just passed 150,000 miles and gets thrashed 7 days a week.

[TOENHEEL]

I ran a Connect DI for a while great reliable van, be careful of newer TDCI engines not cheap for parts when they go wrong!!

Edited by TOENHEEL on Thursday 16th June 14:56

[Bill]

Dale H said:

I'd tell him to look at a transporter too, not a bad van to drive over long distances and it should cope with a couple of bikes.

Me too, and Transits and Mercs rust like you wouldn't believe.

[s35will]

We run two 2007 Citroen Relays. Had them from new. They currently both have about 80,000 miles on the clock and haven't had to have anything major done to them in that time. And they get abused from cold everyday, making between 5 and 10 stop offs in about 2 hours every morning so constantly being turned over. Would explain the battery warning light intermittently coming on, on one of the vans.