On Stockholm streets filled with a vast fleet of classic American cars, one particular tall ship – a very tall one indeed – towers over the rest. Here, any American full-size van sits higher than almost all other vehicles on the road, aside from a few jacked-up 4x4s; when the van is itself a jacked-up 4×4, its driver sits in rarefied air. This 1980s Dodge Ram is from that uncommon class of vehicle that is rare in the United States, and even rarer in Europe.
Like many types of classic American cars, full-size vans more than a quarter-century old are surprisingly numerous in Sweden, where it is not unusual to see Ford Econolines, Chevrolet Beauvilles and Dodge Rams from the 1980s in regular use as passenger vehicles or cargo haulers. Standing out from this crowd requires something extraordinary, and this Van Charger 4×4 conversion is that.
The Van Charger was a Dodge Ram 4×4 conversion by Pathfinder Equipment Co., which made them from 1976 to 1990. Pathfinder also made Ford Econoline “Quadravan” and Chevy/GMC “K-Van” conversions in the 1970s and 1980s before going out of business in 1992. Any of them is an excellent choice for transporting a large number of lanky Swedes through deep snow during a Scandinavian winter.
Here is the business end of the Van Charger conversion, a Dana 44 solid front axle with 15-inch tall coil springs. The rear end used the standard axle and leaf springs with 3 3/8″ lift blocks. There was a full-time 4WD system using a New Process 203 transfer case from 1976 through 1984, followed from 1985 to 1990 by a part-time system using either a Borg Warner 1345 or New Process 205 unit.
The Van Charger’s owner did not appear, so I could not get the story behind it; however, I might actually have found it randomly during an internet search. It may be the same Van Charger whose new owner described, in a four-year-old message board post, as a 1988 that was exported to Sweden in 1989. If this is the same van, it has spent almost a quarter-century in Sweden, enduring 24 winters of snow with its 4×4 system making it someone’s go-to winter vehicle. Rust, dents and missing trim pieces are reminders of those years. Clearly, it’s still in regular use, being moved around constantly and parked outside–another hard-working American classic earning its living on the streets of Sweden.
A rock-crawlin’ van, Yeah!
Rust, dents and missing trim pieces were the norm here in the U.S., too. These vans, while providing the stiffest structure of any American van, was the last vehicle in production which benefited from Chrysler’s wonderful fuselage-era body engineering.
That said, I simply love this. Just looked at the pictures again – I love it even more. When we were asked about “guilty pleasure” vehicles, I answered before I saw this. A full-sized Dodge van that sits up in the clouds and can go anywhere in snow – my dream vehicle. At least today.
I’d have to disagree with the statement that the Dodge Vans provided the stiffest structure of any American van. Yes it was better than the GM van but behind the Ford with its full frame. Park one of each on a construction site that is seriously un even. You will be able to operate the sliding door on the Ford but may not on the Dodge and most likely not on the Chevy. Back when I had my mobile auto repair business a large percentage of my customers were in the construction trades, and it was during an era when there was a big boom in new construction in our area.
I can’t say that I ever experienced a Dodge with the sliding door, but my 94 Club Wagon always had a bit of twist/creak/shudder in the structure, as would be expected out of a full-frame vehicle with a cube-shaped box bolted on top. This must be one really tough vehicle to engineer torsional rigidity into, with nothing in the body other than a cowl to provide any decent cross-bracing. Every Dodge I have ever been in felt much “tighter” to me, without the kinds of movement I would experience in the body of my Ford. I have understood that the Dodge is a hybrid between a unibody and a full frame vehicle, both sort of welded together. I wonder if Ford just engineered a better sliding door mechanism than Dodge did? In my area, Dodge vans with sliders were not all that common compared to those with hinged doors. With Ford and Chevy, it was mostly sliders in the 70s/early 80s.
I think you are confusing the term unibody with monocuque. The basic construction of the Dodge van is no different than that of the GM vans prior to the current models, 74 and older Fords, Astro, Aerostar, Caravan and many others. There is a frame rail like member of sheet metal stamped into a “hat” shape welded to the floor pan the entire length of the vehicle. Early Chrysler unibody cars as well as the unibody T-bird and Lincoln used similar construction. There was a time where the mfgs stopped using those full length members on cars, those have front “rails” that stopped somewhere under the passenger compartment and maybe another set that includes the mounting points for the rear suspension. However many modern cars have returned to running those frame rail like members full length of the vehicle or at least between the front and rear sub frames.
I’ve seen a grey Chevy 4×4 van in & around Melbourne CBD a few times but never gotten a picture if it. I’d be surprised if there were too many around given the alternatives from Mitsubishi Express/Delica, Land Rover or Cruiser troop carriers or even the Land Cruiser Arkoonah conversions.
I would have put a 4WD van on my guilty pleasures list, but there’d be nothing guilty about it. (Except perhaps a twinge of remorse upon needing some driveline part made from unobtainium.)
Too bad they’re so hard to come by. A decade of eagle-eyeing the used market locally has turned up exactly two that would have interested me – one had they not been asking five figures, the other had it not been mostly rusted away.
With the late-model Express vans being available with factory AWD, it seems most likely that my first all-terrain work van won’t be an aftermarket job. (And that it will be several more years in coming, what with the most elderly examples being a mere nine years old, and the average age being around four.)
No need to worry about the driveline components being made of unobtainium. The wear parts on these are standard off the shelf pieces and if you did something like break a bracket there is a source. http://www.pathfinder-vans.com/
Were any of these 4X4 vans factory? I kind of remember seeing several Econoline vans of mid 1990’s vintage rolling about with the local Ford dealership stickers/tag brackets
As Keith mentioned the current GM vans are the first full size vans from an American mfg to offer a factory installed 4wd option. Among conversions the Ford was far and away the most popular. Some of it was likely due to the fact that for many years Ford vans had the lions share of the market. The other reason was that they were the easiest to convert since they had a full frame since 1975 and it’s design accommodated a front driving axle w/o the need to jack the truck up so high for clearance. Its full frame also meant that if you got the van twisted up in some seriously uneven territory you could still open and close the doors,particularly the sliding door, which you could forget about on the GM and may not be able to do on the Dodge.
Can I get it in Cummins? I liked the Tasmanian 4WD CF Bedford conversions idea but I’m not sure any were sold.
Nice find!
BTW, that silver car behind it in the first photo, it almost looks like a Mazda Protege 5, or 323 hatchback, due to how the front bumper/skirt looks, though hard to tell if the back area actually has the big, round driving/fog lights in them though.
Speaking of P5’s on my way to the grocery store a short bit ago, I spotted a very, very nice white P5 coming down the hill as I walked up. Everything on in terms of lights seemed to work, even both license plate lights, the paint looked ultra shiny like it had been repainted or kept in a garage since new, and the headlight buckets looked new and very clear, not partially or all cloudy like they often are by now.
It was a nice find when I see these things all over the place around these parts, including mine, LOL.
I have ’84 GMC Rally Wagon Custom here in central Florida. I purchased it for 4k a little over 3 years ago from Phoenix, AZ. Absolutely no rust. It had the 350 F.I. swapped for an ’01 Interceptor 350 TBI with Borg Warner TC and THM 400 tranny. I’ve been slowly dumping money into it making it even better. Cosmetically it is rough as I do take it off-road a lot. But it goes places no van has been before.
I live in Sweden, and I once owned a B350 Van Charger just like this one. It was one of the best vehicles I ever owned. And I regret that I ever sold it. There was a company around Gothenburg who imported these vans to Sweden in the 80’s. And they sold a lot of them, to both electric company’s, and tele company’s.
Would like to own one again.
/ Dennis
I’m in the United States and I have one of these for sale in 1984 Dodge d350 van charger 4×4
Hi. Can you send the photos of Dodge to saulius.mastauskas@gmail.com
I have 1979 dodge royal B300 with the pathfinder 4×4 conversion. It’s a crappy photo but the only one I have on my new phone but have a bunch on my old phone just have to find out how to load them on my computer.
There have been quite a few of the VanCharger Dodges in Sweden, they were sold at least to power and telecom companies as well as for firefighting. I have seen at least 10 over the years. Would love to own one.
I owned 6 Dodge Van Chargers before, they all came from Switzerland and were used by the fire department as special vehicles for emergencies. The ones from the eighties were build by Pathfinder, the ones from the nineties are build by Quigley. When they were build in Switzerland they all get a different name. The Dodge brand name was removed and the new name Mowag was put on. All cars were build in Ontario (Canada) and shipped after the conversion to Switzerland.