A friend of mine with an airport shuttle business that serves rural mountain areas is considering replacing a ten passenger E-350 van with an Excursion. The snow situation has made it impossible to continue and van conversions to 4 wheel drive are expensive and hard to find complete and funtioning. So, we are looking at the Excursion. My question about seating is it possible to fit three rows of "Captain Chair" seats (including the driver and shotgun seat) WITH a bench seat at the very back. Clearly, this leaves no luggage space but this outfit generally is hauling a trailer full of skiing or hunting gear. It is also clear that, in order to meet DOT safety requirements, this seating plan would involve substantial modification and reinforcement of the floor.

Why this config? well, customer feed back is that the bench seats with three across suck big time. The prevailing view is that rows of individual seats would be more comfortable for everyone even though maximum capacity is reduced. These runs to the airport can last four hours or more and being stuffed between two sneezing, coughing passengers is not going down well.

So, any thoughts on this would be much appreciated.

 

check quigley4x4.com

I think no matter how you slice it, IMHO it would be difficult to haul that many people in an X, and I think the headroom would be pretty tight on the third row of capt. chairs. I think a van conversion might be more cost efficient, but I dunno.

just a thought

Isaac

 

I would agree with Isaac. I believe you could fit that many seats in the EX, but there would be zero leg room for that rear most bench. Right now the third row seat is raised up a little but the passengers feet sit lower behind the second row. I think if you put that 4th row in the poor souls sitting there would have no feeling left in their legs after 4 hours of their knees around their shoulders.

 

When I started to read the original post, the first vehicle that came to my mind was the Quigley. I recently saw a post somewhere in FTE regarding the 4X4 van. (I believe it was in the V-10 forum).

Do a search to find it here in FTE and do a Google to find info outside of "FTE land".

 

This is what you need
http://www.chrisklug.com/uploads/Sunshine-Suzy-web.jpg

 

Great suggestion, although it might be a little problematic on the Interstate from Albuquerque to Santa Fe!

I hope to visit the Quigley Van site. Thanks for the reference- 71-4R3Sons.

 

What about a streched excursion 4x4 like this:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Ford-...spagenameZWDVW

You might not need all the fancy accoutrements but you could probably buy one thats not as formally set up.

Besides Quigly there's Sportsmobile:

http://www.sportsmobile.com/4_4x4sports.html

They also have a link to quigly on their site. There's lots of good information on this site.



Another option I've seen is reversing the back seats to each other. You may be able to gain that extra room you need in a stock excursion with little fab work involved.

Hope you find what you are looking for. Let us know how it pans out.

 

Chevrolet Express is available in All Wheel Drive. I would think that would be the least expensive starting point.

 

If you rather have an Excursion than a Quigley equipped Econoline, then you might want to give this Excursion a look at. It seems like the company can special make you something and you can get the captain chairs you want with room to spare.

• http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/2001-...QQcmdZViewItem

• http://www.customautosbytim.com/10.html

 

The six door X looks real nice. (wonder if wife would let me buy it)

 

I don't think you could fit the bench in the back but three rows of captain's chairs is very doable with even minimal mods. It'd be next to impossible for an adult to access a 4th row bench unless it was reversed (ala littleseats.com)

I've seen Excursion limos (non stretched) that put captains in place of the 3rd row bench. I doubt they do anything to the floor.

 

good point monsta. I had forgotten about that. Here's a link

http://www.beckerautodesign.com/used.html