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While there are plenty of places out there you can buy a pre-made, ready-to-rock camper van, there’s something to be said for creating a bespoke one. After all, it’s not just a vehicle; it’s also going to be your home away from home, and deserves to be as unique as you are. Plus, creating your own means you can choose from a far wider variety of vehicles to start with, be it a Nissan minivan or a Chevy Suburban. Or, in this case, a sweet ex-Secret Service van that already has a lot of the mods needed to serve as a great rolling second home.
The van — listed on Denver-area Craigslist and discovered up by The War Zone — is a 1994 Ford E350 modified by Quigley 4×4 to boast four-wheel-drive. It’s based on a heavy-duty chassis, while a massive 7.5-liter V8 serves up power to those four wheels. Thanks to the manner in which this van, which the Secret Service used during the Clinton administration, was transported from place to place — usually in the back of an Air Force cargo jet or box truck, not via its own power — the mileage is shockingly low for a 26-year-old vehicle; there’s only 21,000 miles on the clock.
But what makes this Clinton-era van an ideal base for a boxy overlander or pint-sized RV is the heavy-duty electrical systems running through this beast (not to be confused with The Beast). The van was of a type described by the Secret Service as “Roadrunners” — or, in layman’s terms, a rolling communications outpost. As such, it packs not one but two generators (including a 7 mW one in a sealed compartment out back), four on-board batteries, power inverters and distributors akimbo and industrial-grade plugs to suck in external power (or pump electricity out). There’s even a vented compartment that originally held an auxiliary air conditioner, but could be easily repurposed to hold a toilet.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, all this capability doesn’t come cheap: the seller is asking $31,000 for this ex-presidential ride. Not cheap, but then again, that’s right around what you’d pay for a new base-model minivan or midsize pickup truck — and then you’d still need to spend thousands to try and get them close to the capability of this van. (Plus, the modifications reportedly cost more than $100,000 back in 1990s dollars, so it’s kind of a steal.) Spend a few more grand having someone like Boho Designs whip up a dynamite interior for this rig, and hey, you may never want to go home again.
