I use one of these to travel for work. If it's less than 8-10 hours, I'll drive. It has a very comfortable ride, has some pep, and it moves, cruises at 80, no problem. We have rear wheel drive version, so it may be the worst vehicle I've ever been in for snow, just an FYI... I learned that lesson, and will not drive it in the snow, at all.
I'm not sure, probably the tires that came with the van. I really am impressed with the way it drives.
FWIW I rented a Pacifica Hybrid E last month when visiting my son in Seattle. It was super comfy and very responsive. Ride quality was excellent and we got about 30mpg with 70/30 city/highway driving. It was brand new (1,400 mi) so not sure how it would fare over the long term but initial impressions were good.
My general experience has been minivans are the one thing that Chrysler does well. I question longevity as well. My 2008 GC (bought used in 2013 w/ 75K miles) went about 10 years and 238K miles before the needling little issues became more that I wanted to deal with. That reliability (and the dead A/C) came to a head in July of 2018 when I got assigned to work in NH again. In general I was happy with the Chrysler product so when I was able to get a "friends and family" hook-up at a Chrysler dealership in South Jersey, I went there looking for a new Pacifica. Unfortunately, they didn't have any on the lot with Stow-n-go, but they did have a one year old ex-Enterprise rental GC GT with 17K miles. The price was reasonable and I drove it home that day. My one regret was not removing the hitch from the '08 since I ended up buying the same hitch for the 2017, but since my original plan was to buy a Pacifica (which uses a different hitch) I didn't know I needed to.
Simple reason and I have owned travel trailers. Size and convenience. We have a Winnebago Revel (Sprinter van) and when traveling we can stop where we want, whenever, and never have to worry about where am I going to park. It makes traveling in an RV way easier. I don’t have to worry about getting to a campsite, unhooking, and then go out and ride or hike. We can hit the trailhead between campsites first thing in the morning. Also we have everything with us at all times, which in shady places can be bad, but for the most part it’s awesome. Also they aren’t as expensive as the internet alludes to. You can buy a brand new Winnebago Revel for 140k not 200k. It’s not cheap but relative to a fully loaded premium SUV it’s reasonable.
If it's any consolation, if you took the hitch off you'd see it was so rusted you'd probably not want to put it on the new minivan.
It hadn't been on the van for too long, so it wasn't too rusty. Fortunately, it wasn't very expensive from e-Trailer, so I didn't cry about it. Now if it had been a Bosal hitch setup for my TDI, that would have been a different story.
I drive a few company work vans and trucks- elevator mechanic for Otis (Local 138 proud!). We generally put 35k/year on vans.
Very solid advice - thank you!!
Is that the stand and drive trim package ? 🤪
Was in the process of washing it out. It lived it's previous like as a dry wall truck so the dust was heavy.
agreed i had a friend that got an old ambulance to use as a contractor work truck. at first it seemed great with all the interior and exterior storage built in, but then he found it was really hard to transport stuff inside compared to a work van. and really challenging to get stuff up onto the roof (i.e. hauling 2x4s or plywood sheets.)
How has the Revel been holding up? Honest question, not criticism. I've never owned an RV, but have friends that do. I have also visited RV facilities I've sold components to. Both are not stellar reviews so I'm curious to your experience.
