The Carchive: The Dodge Spacevan

It’s time for another instalment of The Carchive, the vehicle brochure based series that was voted #1 in a poll of sanitation workers in Newark, N.J. Thanks, guys.
We’re here in the UK today, with a small van that carried a well recognised American badge. Truthfully, it had carried various identities before the Pentastar arrived, and I’ll bet you guys across the pond would have loved Dodge to have sold a van anywhere near this hilarious looking in the USA.
It’s the Spacevan.

“…We’ve made a host of changes that make the Spacevan even more attractive, even better to drive, even easier to use”
The name Spacevan may have been applied in ’74, but the actual machine beneath had been around since 1960. It was first named FC, for Forward Control, and sold as a Commer, one of the commercial vehicle arms of the Roots Group. Under the skin there were many bits of Humber and Hillman engineering, which accounts for the way that the wheels are tucked well inside the bodywork extremities, with the bulky bodywork draped over the top.
The machine you’re looking at wears the Dodge badge as a legacy of Chryslers takeover of the Rootes Group at the end of the ’60s. Indeed, despite the implosion of Chrysler Europe and its eventual takeover by Peugeot, the Dodge brand remained in use on commercial vehicles throughout Europe all the way through the ’80s.

So, what of the van itself, then? Well, it had certain advantages over its contemporaries, namely an extraordinary amount of loadable volume inside.
“…you get 5.66m3 (200ft3) useable load space. And that’s real space… not a theoretical figure”
You also had a very good level of manoeuvrability, thanks to that short wheelbase and narrow front track, although this translated, as you might expect, to slightly dubious  high-speed stability, which was the tip of the iceberg with regards ways in which Spacevan was inferior to non Rootes-inspired products.
Just as well that high speeds weren’t really on the menu, then. The 1.7 litre four-pot offered either 50hp or 57 in high-compression form. Road tests found 70mph to be the absolute maximum, although Autocar magazine advised 65mph as a more realistic top end. If that was still too fast for you, there was a diesel available that thrummed out 41.3hp (the 0.3 was vital, presumably) for which no performance figures are available in the brochure, owing to everybody ever being charged with the task of performance testing having died of old age or boredom before measurement was complete.
“You’ll find the new cab makes the Spacevan better, easier and more comfortable to drive.”
It had to be, really. Transit and, later, the Bedford CF series had shown how far van design had come, and that a life of purgatory really wasn’t necessary for van drivers any more. Indeed, the Transit offered the same kind of refinement that a family saloon could offer. The Commer, or Dodge, whatever, er, didn’t.

With that weedy engine sited between the front seats, noise was always the enemy. The ’77 facelift did much to improve matters, though it wasn’t nearly enough, despite the “new tobacco colour”. By the end in 1982 the Spacevan was horribly outdated, having lasted as long as it did mainly because of its low price. This meant it was very popular in the public sector, and was a regular sight on the city streets of England, bedecked in cheerful British Telecom yellow. I have little doubt there is a generation of telephone engineers who went on to have serious hearing deficiencies for the rest of their lives thanks to being forced to drive around in a Spacevan.
(Disclaimer: All images are of genuine original manufacturer publicity materials photographed atop a pile of old wood in my back garden. All copyright remains property of Chrysler UK, who haven’t exsisted for decades, so you can pretty much do what you want I suppose)