My house is now in escrow, so I’m aiming to purchase a van in a couple weeks. Here’s the story…
I want 4WD but how important is it? I will be traveling through mountains plenty and I won’t exactly be in Mexico all winter. Issue is price… the Mercedes 170" with 4WD run about 75K empty. Then I figured I’d go with a Ford and have it converted to 4WD by Quigley’s in PA, since they have a contract with Ford to do so and not void other parts’ warranties. I contacted them and it would be 6 months before they could even take in the van for this conversion. Ouch! Plus the build out can take nearly that long- not really wanting to wait for 2020 for my first vanlife trip. So… do I need 4WD? Another option is to purchase an already-converted Ford in Portland from a dealer that already has a few that they sent out to Quigley’s but the markup is substantial- $66K. I was looking at low 40K range to purchase a new van and $13K for Quigley’s to do the conversion. That’s much less than $66K, but also would be 6 months down the road.
How important is 4WD?