I haven’t exactly been a huge fan of the Astro (CC here), as it was too crude and trucky to make a good family hauler. But precisely those qualities have also made it a very durable piece of iron, and with AWD, it did become a rather compelling alternative to the much longer Suburban as a work-ready AWD roomy hauler. It’s honest and unpretentious, and with this fine Eugeneian paint job, I find it strangely attractive. And it even has the early style sloping nose. It’s never to late to find a little warmth for an Astro.
Jackson Pollock Ltd Ed. Surely that vehicle is considered a traffic hazard.
“Durable” may be stretching it a bit… I have always considered these things as nothing more than a shipping crate for that wonderful 4.3V6….great engine, especially in the marine/industrial field…
I drove one of these once, on an eight-hour round trip on the Interstate. It didn’t suck. Now, I’d been used to full-sized vans, having been a veteran driver of them, and I rather liked the more compact size of the Astro. It was powerful enough and handled well enough. The front-seat passenger complained about footroom, and rightly so, because the wheel well protruded mightily and the center console intruded.
Does anybody else see Astro but think “Rastro”?
Hail selassie.
There used to be one in the St. Louis area that had ‘Rastro’ as a vanity plate.
I would take an AWD one. I have seen scary things with the RWD ones in the snow
Until you have to work on it (I work on my neighbor’s 2WD one).
Spark plugs have to be reached from below.
With AWD, you’d better be good with a wide selection of extension bars and swivel joints.
“Spark plugs have to be reached from below”
+1.
Contorting yourself into ungodly impossible-to-reach spots, with umpteen inches of extensions and a U-joint attached to your ratchet… are we having fun yet?
First experience with that drive train was very good. The trannie was a 700r4. Gave the truck to my Granddaughter for an out of state move. She moved and has since painted the truck. I replaced it with an olds bravada that I thought was essentially the same thing. I was very wrong. Everything that could go wrong did.
During that period in never never land with no useful truck I came to know and hate the electronic valve block on the 4L60e(?) transmission as it bravely tried to shift into two gears at the same time. I think this Astro van is probably a good truck and durable like my S10. I wound up buying a 4 runner anyway and have had no reason to regret it yet. I think I will just stick to a manual in a truck.
It could be interesting to see how many Astro/GMC Safari was made with the “Dutch doors”? They was introduced around 1990-1992 http://history.gmheritagecenter.com/wiki/index.php/Dutch_Door_Design
Let’s wait and see to see how the Nissan NV200 rebadged Chevrolet City Express will do in the market. The folks of Edmunds suggested an optionnal diesel engine for that van.
I grew up in West michigan where these things were everywhere. A lot of them did have the Dutch doors.
I had the “pleasure” of taking 2 long trips in one of these. It was my buddy’s father’s van, which was called into service for the trips- one to southern Indiana, one to Denver, both from Kenosha. For the Denver trip the van was loaded to the gills.
It ran very well and never had a problem on either trip. It was, however, prone to wandering out of its lane. You couldn’t take your concentration off it for more than a few seconds. After a while I found a rhythmic sawing at the wheel would keep it going straight.
It gave almost 200,000 miles before it became too rusty to use safely.
I leased a 1997 Astro. My simply horrible experience with the vehicle and the rotten dealer support prompted me to swear off GM–forever!
Manufacturing defects: 1) Engine assembled with no gasket between throttle body and manifold. 2) Persistent driveline vibration at 65 mph–rebalance of driveshaft, all four wheels (repeatedly) to no effect 3) chewed up front tires every 20k miles–alignment (several) made no improvement 4) tape player ate cassettes for lunch–daily 5) HVAC knobs so brittle that they would frequently twist off their shaft 6) rear bench seat back rest latches that allowed seatbacks to rattle constantly–in unison with the driveline vibration.
The day my 36 month lease was over was one of the happiest days of my automotive life!
Astro/Safari’s rock, especially the 1st gen. I had a 90 astro cargo van shorty, it was a great little delivery/party van. with the G80 positrac and 300lbs of sandbags it would go anywhere. without them it was an unpredictable drift machine.
It is too bad these are such death traps because I kind of like them and their ruggedness compared to the Chrysler Minivans of that era. Then again, loads of people in Portland drive around in Kombies, MasterAces, and other similarly designed vans and just as unsafe vehicles so perhaps I need to stop worrying so much. I sometimes wish the Avalanche styling had spread to these vehicles in 2003 (among others) since that would have lead to more variety and GM was already in the crapper so more money wasting would not have been surprising.
These vans are all over South Central Los Angeles and so are the Quest/Villager twins, wish I had taken more photos when I lived there. No idea how safe the Aerostar is because the steering wheel fell off during the crash test and the schmucks (in my opinion) at IIHS did not bother doing the test again with another van. Perhaps it is safer than the GM twins.
“Everyone laughs until they ask you to help them move” was a great comment made by Lynne Vogt regarding the usefulness of the Chevy SS pickup. This a great vehicle to haul stuff. Easy to load, relatively easy to park. Not the sexiest car but very functional especially with the rear seats removed. I kinda like this paint scheme. Bet you it really camouflages itself well in Oregonian neighborhoods.
Looks like a fun ride! But Im wondering how he got that lift kit on there. Maybe these shared suspensions with the S-10 pickups/blazers?
GM built the work/fleet version of these till… 2004? 2005? I still see fleet white models on occasion I think all were AWD by the end.
4.3 has durability similar to the SBC although living in the mountainous part of the Desert Southwest I am always alarmed by watching the way the oil pressure spikes in most old 4.3s when you put the spurs to them.
Not that GM intended it this way, but I think the Astro ended up hitting the exact sweet spot for people who wanted to use a minivan like a truck or people who wanted a fullsize van that was a little more livable. My dad had one, which I learned to drive on (and wrote about at great length in the original CC – one of my first comments here!) so I’ve always had a soft spot for them, but I also think they were legitimately good vehicles. It was only this and the Aerostar in this small, brief class and though I think Ford’s take was better at being a minivan, the Astro was probably closer to what most people were actually looking for. Simple, rugged and not entirely uncomfortable. No more, no less. They’re still fairly common, pretty much all of them now serving as battered commercial vehicles.
Is the AWD version actually capable of being used off-road? I’m guessing it’s one of those torque-on-demand systems that only activates when the rear wheels slip. It’d be cool if someone built one using S-10 hardware with the low-range transfer case. The slight lift, Soft 8s and matte black finish look awesome on this one. Very purposeful – I’d love to have a backup car like this for moving stuff around and towing.
Here’s the one I learned to drive on. The paint started peeling only a couple years after it was new, but my dad is not the type of person who cares about such things! He first had it as a company car when he was a traveling salesman and liked it so much that he bought it back after turning it in. It was a ’93 SWB, blue interior and CS trim (not sure what that even means). Lots of good times in this thing!
It’s the lineal descendant of those WW II GMC/Chevy cab-over signals vans:
Cool ride!
These (at least the earlier versions with the good ol’ TBI 4.3) were dead reliable. 200-300K can be wrung out of these and one unit I saw in a scrapyard had over 400K on it.
The early ones looked pretty sharp too.
I am definitely not a fan of most things GM, but I will agree with Junqueboi about the longevity of the 4.3 engine.
There is a florist shop in my town that had (has?) a early version of the Astro with well over 200k on it.
Years ago ,when I was looking for a mini-van to accommodate my growing family I test drove an Astro. that had been sitting at the local used car dealer.
I don’t know if it was unusual, but this Astro had a factory 3 or 4 speed floor shift.
The lot boy that brought the van around for me for test drive told me it was fun to drive.
I understood what he meant as that Astro with its 4 speed was quite fast, at least by mini-van standards.
What are you guys looking at? Is there something behind that hedge?
I’ve been trolling The List for these for awhile now. It looks like you can get a pretty clean AWD one in the 3 to 5K range. I just traded one old truck for a slightly newer old truck, and am regretting not getting one of these. Might have to jump on one next…