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My wife has a Chevy Express van, AWD with an elevator ramp that will lift a 600 pound power wheel chair. Nice vehicle and the best riding van I have ever seen. It does not have a raised roof.
What kind of mileage do you see? Been looking at cargo vans and the awd expresses are intriguing.
Minivans have gotten bigger actually. A Toyota Sienna for example is almost as wide as my previous Ford conversion vans. My vans were 211" long, Sienna is 205".
My vans used to do 15 mpg downhill with a tailwind, a Sienna will do 25 mpg on highway. Since conversion vans are truck-based, most moms find FWD minivans a lot easier to drive. Who can't get caught on a minivan, but still wants room, is driving a large-size SUV for it. Same MPG, better image.
Since the economy took a hit 5 years ago, people travel for vacation less. They turned their Conversion van in for a sipping Honda Civic daily driver.
Van conversions are still around. I've seen a couple of Nissan NVs now, too. They come from the factory with the high roof...a dealer in Indiana has one, as does this one in FL.
Here in SE MI, they were extremely plentiful until about ten years ago. In the 90s, Dodge B150 conversions were cheaper than Grand Caravans around here. They are still plentiful, but most coming up for sale are heavily abused.
I also grew up with one (parents had it before I was born in '74, sold it before I turned 16... so sometime late 80's). Theirs was a home-made Camping conversion van, back had a booth/table that converted to a bed, with storage under the bench seats. A sink and single burner 'stove', even a port-o-potty. We'd frequently load it up (tee-pee poles on top) for long weekends out hunting, camping or headed to Rendezvous (dad was into the mountain-man thing). Plenty of room for the 3 of us when I was a kid, always had a dry room for the night, a place to cook, LOTS of gear storage, etc...
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I would like one of those as an alternative to an RV. Now, a friend of the family had a conversion van and I borrowed it for a month back in the late 1990's. It scared the crap out of me, the way it caught wind.
I want a small RV but I know I will have a heart attack driving something that tall, so I figured if I did buy a converted "camper van" I could maybe get used to the wind thing, moreso than with an RV..? I would have to force myself. Post-wreck trauma issues from a rollover accident when I was a teen (as a passenger), I tend to be a bit more prone to freaking out than others I guess, when driving vehicles that are the least bit wibbly wobbly.
We can fit 7 in our Honda minivan but those in the rear third seat need to be little kids or skinny teens.. and yeah, once we add dogs and stuff it is not roomy at all, though we still do appreciate it, I can dream about something roomier for now.
One of my brother's hippie friends had a converted van with orange shag carpet and velour curtains and a table and all that, back in the 70's. I remember thinking it was so cool, like a little apartment on wheels (I was 7 or 8 at the time).
I was explaining to my kids that when I was growing up my parents had a conversion van and even though it was like 5 inches....it had a TV in it. It got me thinking that I haven't seen a new conversion van in years. Did the SUV simply just crush the van market? Did minivans just replace the need for a big van?
I looked on Ebay and there are new ones for sale (one had 7 tvs mounted in headrests/roof) and they come in AWD (Chevy). I can't think of a single person I know that has one or even a neighbor that drives one.
What happened? What are pedophiles going to drive in the future!
The minivan is what happened - they did pretty much everything a conversion van can do while being smaller, easier to drive, easier to park,and more economical. Minivans today face a lot of competition from SUVs, and there have been a few SUV/minivan crossovers, like the Mercedes M500 and the Chrysler Pacifica.
These days a minivan has about as much room as an old conversion van, seats 7, has many customization options, and can be had pretty cheap. Most people can make due without the couch/bed in the back because all they really need is space to haul their stuff around along with a kid or two.
What we found when we bought our most recent conversion van is people tend to hang onto them until they are basically worn out. Thus, most of the used ones you find have 100,000 plus miles on them. pr they are newish but the sellers have no understanding of the used market for them (you take a huge hit due to the dealer mark ups on new ones). We looked at about 30 of them before finding what we were looking for (under 100,000 miles, under $20,000). We had to drive three hours to get it and we had to buy it from a dealer, which I hate (frankly I would not have bought it, but my wife went and got it when I was out of town). The good news is when you find one not abused, people generally take immaculate care of them. Ours was 5-6 years old, but it looked entirely new inside and out.
As far as I am concerned the Chevy Express is the only viable option. Dodge quit making full sized vans a while back, and they got pretty crummy in the last few years before they stopped. Ford has not changed their van in the past 20 more more years (not the sprinter, sprinter does not interest me). The express rides very nicely, it comes with some great engines, it has some terrific options for pre-conversion (like passenger doors on both sides). There are a few common problems they do not seem to fix. The passenger door hinges have to be oiled every two months or so or they will freeze up. This is a design error, but they just keep using the same hinges. They catalytic converters ten to plug up and/or come apart inside. They are insanely expensive to replace. However it is not expensive to bypass them. You have to watch out for the rear AC units on some conversions. Cheap ones break constantly and they are expensive to repair. This is true of any make/model, it depends on the conversion company. Those stupid electric bench/bed things break all the time in every kind of van. They are useless for a bed, except for kids anyway, but kids love them. I like them because the high voltage power supply for the motor is perfect to tap into for a large inverter.
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Now, a friend of the family had a conversion van and I borrowed it for a month back in the late 1990's. It scared the crap out of me, the way it caught wind. 
