For nearly as long as I can remember, I always wanted a vehicle with a V-10. Granted, I could put up with a supercharged V-8 if I had to, but a V-10 would be the ultimate, or so I thought. Stranger still, I purchased the V-10 by accident.
Despite already having a van, two weeks ago, or so, I was van shopping. I found what I thought was a real gem, a 15 passenger for only $1,200. However when we went to look at it, it had 50,000 more miles on it than the owner remembered, and took about a can of starting fluid before firing up. And it look liked it was the winner of a moose road kill rally. It also appeared that the interior was used for housing animals.
My first inclination was to offer the seller $500. However Marlene insisted that we drop the whole idea of buying this old wreck, and after some consideration I agreed. My Alaskan friends told me if I want to stay in Alaska any length of time, the number one priority is “Keeping your wife happy”. I had already blown this by keeping some chickens in the cabin, so it was time to hone my skills.
Around this time, we discovered a van for sale in Soldotna. It was a 2005 Ford Econoline with an outrageous price of $6,500. This was far above my normal price ceiling when vehicle shopping. You could almost buy a new 4 wheeler with that kind of money. I was told the van had a “460 V-8”, a worthwhile engine but not very exotic. Wanting to keep Marlene happy, and secretly suspecting she may be right, I agreed to buy it. After a week of begging, the car lot finally sold it to me. As I was finishing up the paperwork, they told me they accidentally gave me the wrong price, several thousand less, and they were hoping I would go away.
After purchasing the van, I discovered that nestled under the hood was a 6.8L Triton 10 cylinder engine, in all it’s glory. I was very pleased with this discovery, I’m not sure if the car lot was even aware of this fact. They told me it had a V-8.
No this is no Dodge Viper with a V-10, it’s even better. You can’t hardly pull a 28 foot saltwater boat with a Viper, nor can you seat 13 people, haul a ton of chicken feed, etc. I haven’t tried, but I bet the van can really burn rubber, just like a Viper, but it probably gets quite a bit higher times on the quarter mile. And no I don’t have a 28 foot boat. But maybe someday I will-however not very soon.
Thanks for reading!
Matt
Our “old” van:
