From what I understand, reading up on these, GM made the mistake by
stopping production on these...The Safari/Astro vans were doing damage to
sales from other GM models is the word, and looking a bit outdated to
management and to the bean counters.   With the cost of fuel rising nobody
was buying full size Chevy vans or SUVs where GM could make a bigger per
unit profit,  when they could get smaller ones that carried the weight,
lasted in fleet service and got slightly better gas mileage....If you want
to pay attention, you will observe in most any city there are tons of these
little vans everywhere, still in use by tradesmen and delivery services
even though they quit making them over ten years ago...

  I have seen mention of a diesel engine swap...haven't read that far
yet...if common wisdom is correct I won't have to worry about the motor for
another 200k miles on this one I have, but when that happens I will
certainly look at diesels..A crate motor from JEGS for these is about
$2k...long block..

On Fri, Jun 6, 2014 at 10:00 AM, Stuart MacMillan <stuartmacm@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Starting in the '90s NHSTA required front end energy absorbing crumple
> zones in all US vehicles, which is why you won't see a rear engined vehicle
> sold here again.  The body is designed so the engine is forced down and
> under in a frontal impact and its mass absorbs some of the force of the
> crash, protecting the cockpit.  Combine that with a bunch of airbags and
> you've got a much safer vehicle.  We Vanagon owners like to live on the
> edge though!
>
> These are nice, practical vans, but are trucks like you said, and they
> couldn't compete with the more refined family minivans from other
> manufacturers.  GM could have refined them (and not just by adding leather
> seats) but opted not to .  But then, GM has made a lot of mistakes . . .
>
> Stuart
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
>   ..... I noticed the front end is more like a normal car...it sticks out
> there
> further than a Vanagon's.
>
>