I spotted this interesting collection of vintage mid-sized GM truck collection on a walk a little while back. There’s two of the rather rare swb 2-door Blazers in back, an Olds Bravada 4-door version and an Astro van to round out the collection. Maybe I should say a 4.3 V6 lover lives here.
I couldn’t get a good shot of the 2-door Blazers. They’ve become pretty rare these days, as they were always a modest seller compared to the four door version. It’s abit surprising GM even bothered. The Bravada seems to have been the object of a break-in.
And early, swb Astro vans aren’t getting any more common either. This person is keeping GM’s golden years going in his front yard.
Still a surprising number of cargo Astros around Tualatin believe it or not and some of them are even customized. Not too many two door Blazers or Blazers in general around here. Sometimes people will lower the two door Blazers and those remind me of a Shooting Brake.
4.3’s a fine engine if you know its foibles and correct them.
But after getting into my Tahoe with its LS goodness, there’s really no going back.
In my experience, the ’95-’97s were superior to ’98 and after. Little things like the molding below the side door windows in front, to major things like the wiring harnesses, were cheapened. ’98 and newer wiring is visibly thinner. Not surprisingly – at least in my experience – wiring issues are more likely to crop up with the ’98 and newer S/T models.
ALWAYS keep a spare ignition module and heat sink on hand. Always.
We also owned two Astros. Other than a propensity to eat idler arms – they have two or three IIRC – they’re a fine vehicle.
Those Blazers and the odd Astro have surfaced here ex Japan it seems, Ive often seen Blazers advertised for sale with engine problems cheap, Parts would be a problem here but of course with the internet and international courier freight anything can be found I guess, Ive not been tempted yet.
I found an Astro on a local Craigslist this week, advertised with only 103K miles, I figured that it had to be some kind of scam as the price was $3-4K.
I almost bought a 2 door Blazer Xtreme a year ago as the price and miles seemed decent. But then I read online that the newer Blazers were piles of crap/poor assembly and reliability. They look cool, tho.
Certainly a nice consolidation around a single powertrain/drivetrain and other parts (rear axle, some suspension bits, etc). Agreed with chas, with its fuel-delivery achilles heel in mind (sensitive to fuel pressure), and the intake gasket/dexcool in mind, the 4.3L is an absolute tank, I’ll argue every bit as durable, perhaps even more-so than the Jeep 4.0L.
I follow a blog of a woman who takes long vacations to drive all over the country with her four or five dogs in her Astro van to photograph roadside architecture. She casually mentioned recently that she’s put 495,000 miles on her van. Or something like that. A shitload of miles. Seems like every trip it breaks down in some major way and costs her $1000 to fix. But she’s dedicated to that van. Her blog: https://roadarch.blog/
Wow, that blog is wonderfully addictive. Somewhat depressing, though, since all of her Updates indicates that the roadside architecture she’d found previously has been destroyed. That would be like if we found all our CCs from several years ago now junked.
But still, the blog is outstanding — even more so, knowing that she makes these travels in a half-million-mile Astro.
My ’05 Astro turned over 261,000 miles just this past weekend–it still has a life ahead of it yet! Problem is the temporary dealer tag expired the following Monday & I still haven’t received the permanent tag & registration for the vehicle. I called B & L Auto Sales today & they said they’re working on it & would call back when it was ready. Until then the Astro will have to stay parked under the shed (I’ve driven it on every weekend up to now to keep the battery charged & everything in the fuel & oil systems lubricated; gone on a few small trips with it as well), but NOT because of mechanical faults. Since I don’t drive this vehicle every day I’m willing to wait for the tag as long as it doesn’t take more than a week or two.
If GM resurrected the Astro, slightly bigger, based on the Colorado/Canyon platform, with an AWD or 4WD option (dare I say it, even a ZR2 version) it would be a big hit with the #vanlife and #overlander crowd, and a mighty fine alternative to a 4WD Sprinter.
There quite a big difference in size between an Astro and the typical Sprinter, many of which are bigger than GM’s full size vans.
But I did see a 4×4 Astro out on the rugged back roads of Eastern Oregon this fall. It was clearly lifted a bit, and had big off-road tires. The 4×4 Astros certainly make a much cheaper if smaller alternative to a 4×4 Sprinter. On could probably pick one up quite cheap now.
Instead, they settled for a badge-engineered Nissan NV200–the City Express. I was actually behind one of these vans while driving the Astro–besides similar size there is NOTHING in common between the 2 vans. Two big things put an end to the City Express’s 4-year run (2014-18): poor sales and zero parts commonality with other GM vehicles. I remember reading the article Motor Trend did during its 2010 Truck of the Year testing: “Ironically, following the [Ford] Transit Connect that day [2003-05] was a late model panel-version Chevy Astro van; and what a slap-the-forehead mistake GM made in dropping that business.” Couldn’t this count as another one of GM’s Deadly Sins?
When the NV200 launched, the Nissan dealer in Barre-Montpelier, VT received an assortment of several including at least 3 or 4 in full New York City taxi spec. I asked one of them about it, they said they just asked for a little of everything! I suggested they make a deal with a nearby hotel and advertise to owner-operators in NYC to buy their new cab from them and get a weekend in Vermont thrown in, to clear them out if nothing else does…
I’ll take the Astro renaissance idea in another direction and say make it AWD with the Volt Drive train. You could power the AC and other camping ‘hotel’ loads off the battery; kinda like how Tesla has a camping mode on the S & X.
Of course VW is bringing back the Bus as their ‘Nostolgia’ model so the niche for EV vans may already be filled soon.
I know a fellow who used a 1995 or 96 GMC Safari van as a highway shuttle service – called it the Shuttle Bug. My grandmother used to take it several times a year to visit my mother, and I used him to transport packages now and then.
He would do a 700km round trip 5-6 days/week, and changed the oil faithfully. He retired the van sometime after it turned over 1 million kilometres. Rebuilt the auto transmission twice, but not the 4.3 V6 engine. I’ve heard stories of high mileage, but this is the only one where I’ve personally seen the vehicle.
If that were my driveway, I’d be swapping panels over between the Bravada and one of the 2-door Blazers….. a 2-door Bravada Sport!