How to find a used wheelchair van
Sadly, cars sometimes break down
It’s a fact of life. Cars eventually break. This spurred me and my family (mostly me) to start looking for replacement minivans.
It wasn’t a problem with the engine. It was a problem with the door that deploys the ramp. The door had fallen off the bottom track. It was especially bad this time because we were all packed up and ready to go to the beach (as part of our 2021 summer trip). And then, just like that, we couldn’t anymore.
It eventually got “fixed.” The issue now is that the door almost POPS off the track when it opens and when it closes, it makes a nasty CRUNCH sound. In the two other times the door came off the track, it was easily fixed by mechanics at our local MobilityWorks. They just put the door back on the track and re-tuned the door's timing.
When we got back from our trip, the search for a new van to replace our old 2011 Honda Odyssey Conversion Van with 170,000 miles began. So the first thing I did was ask my parents what the non-negotiable features were.
And they are:
- Toyota Sienna or Honda Odyssey*
- Years 2017–2021; except for the 2021 Sienna**
- Fewer than 50,000 miles
- Leather/pleather seats
- Side-entry ramp
- Removable passenger seat w/ track for tie-downs
*My parents think the Chrysler Pacifica, Dodge Grand Caravan, or Chevy Traverse are “bad” cars. So I went with that.
** The 2021 Sienna is a hybrid model that’s said to have inconsistent braking and be underpowered. And this is in the unconverted minivan — which is not good!
It’s worth saying that I had a short 10-week adventure, in the winter, to see if I could drive a car. I don’t need to go into much detail. I studied for a few days (using this amazing app) and got a learner’s permit. And then, I scheduled a few weeks of once-a-week lessons at an adaptive driving school. During those lessons, I drove a van with the setup the instructor thought would be best. And the instructor determined I had too much trouble holding myself up in corners and that driving wouldn’t work for me. The takeaway is that if the person in the wheelchair is able to drive, you are likely looking for slightly different features in the van you choose.
I wanted to look at cars online, so I needed to know which trims of Sienna and Odyssey had leather seats. For the Sienna, that knocked off the L and LE trims. For the Odyssey, that knocked off the LX and EX trims.
After looking for a while, I came to a realization. All I want to know is if any particular car was a good deal. So I figured I needed to know two things:
- The MSRP of a particular car (without a conversion)
- The MSRP of the conversion
The first thing is fairly easy. You just hop on Kelly Blue Book enter in the year, make, model, reported mileage, trim level, and condition. The only difficulty is figuring out the condition of the car. KBB has four condition levels: fair, good, very good, and excellent. I decided with my dad that the condition of an online car would be based on mileage. I would mark
- Excellent is anything under 10,000 miles
- Very good is between 10,000 and under 30,000 miles
- Good is between 30,000 and under 50,000 miles
- Fair is greater than 50,000 miles
I always selected “Price with standard equipment” and for the color, I chose silver to keep it easy. And that’s it, I had the KBB value for each car!
Now I needed to know the cost of the conversion. And I ran into a hiccup in that there are a few different conversion companies. So I limited myself to Braunability, VMI, and AMS conversions (mostly for their big names). And to my amazement, these companies have the MSRP of the conversions right on their websites!
The next problem I ran into had to do with the two different conversion models for the Toyota Sienna Braunability (2017–2020). There’s the power foldout, the XT, and the power infloor, the LI. But the 2021 Sienna only comes as the XT conversion, which can be found here for $34,230. The Sienna with LI isn’t on the website, because it’s been discontinued, so I needed a workaround.
Here’s what I did: I looked at the cost of the in-floor and XT Pacificas and added that difference on top of the foldout for the Sienna. It’s not perfect, but it’s good enough to identify good deals. The difference comes out to be $32,210-$29,720 = $2,490. So my estimate of the value of the LI Sienna conversion was $34,230 + $2490 = $36,720.
See the table below classifying all the other conversions and their prices.
These are pulled right off the websites. I’m pretty sure these are all the possible models for Sienna’s and Odyssey’s. And if you don’t understand the pricing, I’m with you.
How is the Sienna VMI Northstar the same price as the Sienna VMI Summit? I would think an infloor conversion would be more expensive. Why is the Odyssey VMI Northstar conversion more expensive than the Odyssey Braunability XI?
I also don’t know if there is a difference in the quality of the conversion between the three converters. Is AMS worse than VMI? Or is VMI better than Braunability? I didn’t come to any conclusion and just assumed more expensive = more value.
Then I made a spreadsheet, Table 2, with a few basic functions to find good deals.
If I knew how I would have written a function to pull the cost of the conversion from the make and conversion model. So if you’re going to use this spreadsheet, you have to copy and paste the MSRP of the conversion from Table 1.
Then I went through lots of websites searching for wheelchair vans of the right trim levels and entered them into the table. It was slow and laborious looking up each van on Kelly Blue Book.
Calling all developers! It would be amazing if someone could make a KBB plug-in for google sheets. That way you could call a KBB function like: =KBB(year, make, model, trim, miles, private)that would spit out the private KBB value.
With 20+ hours of scrolling through lists and entering in data, I found a few vans with over $20k of savings. One of those we’re in the process of purchasing now.
Q/A
Where did you find the best deals? And my answer is Craigslist, BLVD, and Adaptive Driving Access in that order.
What did you do with cars without a listed price? I ignored them, I didn’t want to spend all my time calling about them. Unfortunately, this is a fairly common practice at dealerships like MobilityWorks. If you have some extra time, call your local price-less dealership and say I found ________ deal from ________. I’m planning on buying it unless you have something like it. Do you have anything?
What if the car is too far to see in person? This is difficult, but if the car is good enough and you know what you need, you can do it all remotely. And by all, I mean a thorough inspection and getting the car shipped to you.
And we actually bought a remote inspection for a car about 5 hours away. Which cost $129 but saved us lots of time and stress. You can see our Alliance Inspection Management (AiM) inspection here:
And to transport a car to you one of the places you can do that with is Direct Express Auto Transport. There are a few other things you would need to do, which you can read about on this site.
How do you afford it? With support from my parents, I don’t have experience with this directly. But you might contact your state’s OVR (Office of Vocational Rehabilitation) or a similar kind of office. I know these kinds of offices can help pay for a wheelchair-accessible van if you can establish a need. And then you can also search for a low-interest assistive technology loan using terms like “Pennsylvania assistive technology loan.” And if you don’t find anything, check out this website for another lead.
I hope this information helps you find a car replacement! Happy searching!
