WARNING: This post ended up being way longer than I intended. I intended to use our experience as sort of a guide for others that are starting to think about (or are in the process of) buying a wheelchair accessible vehicle. What I ended up with was a blog post that is over 4,000 words long, and I’m not sure if I would call it a guide. It’s just everything we did when we set out to buy a new van. I tried to go back to see if I could shorten it and shape it into more of a guide like I originally wanted, but that turned out to be a larger project than I wanted to tackle.

I apologize for this being so long, but hopefully you’ll be able to pull out some ideas that you will find useful if you’re in the market for a wheelchair accessible vehicle. At the very end of this post is a resource section with several websites, organizations, and companies we used throughout the process of purchasing our van. If you want to skip directly to that section, just click the link below.

Click here to skip directly to the Resource section.

 

Well, we finally did it. We bought ourselves a new van, and we couldn’t have done it without the generosity of the almost 200 people who donated to our fundraiser. If you were one of those amazing people, we sincerely thank you for your generosity.

Before I reveal the newest member of our family, I’d like to go over the process we went through in acquiring our new van in hopes that it can serve as a bit of a guide for other families that are in need of a wheelchair accessible van for their family.

When we were planning to purchase our first wheelchair accessible van about eleven years ago, we had a full-fledged fundraiser that included raffles, auctions, and an admission fee. It took a year of hard work and planning, but when it was all over, we had raised enough money to pay cash for a brand-new 2014 Dodge Grand Caravan modified by BraunAbility. That van cost us just a smidge over $54,000 after taxes, title, extended warranty, and all other fees were added on.

In October of 2021 we had a bit of a wakeup call when my eleven-year-old car died. After getting a couple of estimates and the repair was going to cost as much as the car was worth, I was pretty much forced to buy a new(er) car. Knowing that a wheelchair accessible van costs almost twice as much as a regular van, what would we do if our van ran into a similar fate that my car did? Would we be able to buy a new one? Not a chance! That’s when we started thinking about replacing the van.

Back in 2014 when we bought our first van, the three main wheelchair accessible vans available were the Dodge Grand Caravan, the Honda Odyssey, and the Toyota Sienna. The Grand Caravan was discontinued after the 2020 model year and was replaced by the Chrysler Voyager. I’m not sure why, but the two top wheelchair accessible vehicle manufacturers, BraunAbility and Vantage Mobility International (VMI), opted not to do conversions on the Voyager, but instead chose the Chrysler Pacifica, which is a more upscale version of the Voyager.

At the time we bought our Grand Caravan, it was the cheapest of the three options, with the Sienna in the middle, and the Odyssey being the most expensive. Pricing has changed a bit, with the Pacifica at the low-end, the Honda Odyssey is now in the middle, and the Sienna being at the high-end. Of course, pricing varies with the various trim levels and options installed. We had many issues with the Caravan over the years, so we didn’t think we wanted to buy another Chrysler product. That narrowed our choices down to either the Odyssey or the Sienna. In researching both of those, there was really only one option for us, the Sienna, for one main reason. With all the stuff that James travels with when we go on vacation, we use a carrier on top of the van. For whatever reason, Honda does not include roof rails on any of their trim levels. You have to purchase them as a dealer installed option. Toyota, on the other hand, includes roof rails factory installed on several trim levels.

We got a chance to look at a 2022 Toyota Sienna modified by BraunAbility at the Abilities Expo in June of 2022, were able to wheel James into it, and thought it would work well for us. Then we saw the sticker price. Holy hell! I was thinking that a new van would cost us somewhere around $60- or $70,000. Man was I wrong!

 

 

According to that window sticker, the MSRP of the unmodified Toyota Sienna is $41,565, and BraunAbility’s cost for the conversion was $38,580 on top of that, which brought the total price of the van to a whopping $80,145!! Eighty thousand dollars! How in the hell are we going to afford an $80,000 van?! We had some money in savings and James’ medical fund that we could put towards a downpayment, but not nearly enough to get a car loan low enough that we could comfortably make payments.

Before I go further into our process of acquiring our new van, I want to pause for a second, because I have a feeling that some of you may be questioning why the conversion is so expensive. Take a look at the BraunAbility video below to see the process they go through to make a van wheelchair accessible. There’s some pretty extensive work that goes into taking a van and modifying it to make it wheelchair accessible. They use a Chrysler Pacifica in the video below, but the process for converting a Toyota Sienna or Honda Odyssey is similar. In all cases, there is extensive work done on the vans.

 

 

Now do you see why the conversion costs so much?

As Stacy and I talked on our way home from the Abilities Expo, we figured that we had two options to be able to afford a van this expensive. We could either rob a bank and risk going to federal prison, or we could try doing another fundraiser. Obviously that first option wasn’t really an option, so we opted for the fundraiser. Because of our work schedules, we knew that we wouldn’t have the time to devote to a fundraiser like our first one, so we looked at other ways to raise funds.

We’ve seen several GoFundMe fundraisers over the years, so that was one of the first places we looked at. We looked at their fees and found that they deduct 2.9% plus 30 cents from each donation. If someone wanted to make a recurring donation, as opposed to a one-time donation, there is a 5% recurring fee per donation. I guess those fees aren’t horrible. Afterall, they are in business to make a profit while helping others raise money. The one thing that I really didn’t like about GoFundMe, though, was that the donations are not tax deductible for the donors. I think a lot of people, me included, view fundraisers more favorably when their donation is tax deductible.

As we continued to look for ways to fundraise, Stacy noticed that one of her Facebook friends was also having a fundraiser for a van through an organization that we had never heard of, Help Hope Live. After looking it over and gathering more information, it seemed like a better fit. They are a 501c3 nonprofit organization that helps individuals and families raise money solely for medical related expenses; donations are tax deductible; they offer one-on-one support; and they’ve been around for over forty years. Their fees are a little bit higher than GoFundMe—3% for donations made by check and 5.65% for online donations—but being able to make a phone call and talk to a human being whenever we had a question made the extra cost worth it to us. That’s something you can’t do with GoFundMe. You can look through their Help Center, email them, or talk to them via live chat. Seems so impersonal.

After about a year and a half, we thought we had raised enough through the fundraiser and the extra money we had been putting away every month to start seriously looking at vans. And then we were hit with another dose of sticker shock. Remember that picture above of the price for a 2022 Toyota Sienna? That had the XLE trim and was $80,145. Fast forward two years and the MSRP of a 2024 Toyota Sienna XLE was now $86,845. The cost of the van had gone up almost $3,000, and the cost of the conversion had gone up almost $4,000 over the past 2 years. But wait, it gets worse.

Remember earlier when I said that we needed a van with roof rails because of all of James’ equipment and supplies that we need to bring with us when we go on vacation? In order to get the roof rails, we needed to step up to the XLE Plus trim, and the MSRP on that is $89,145! Two years after our jaws hit the floor looking at the $80,000 sticker price of the Sienna we saw at the Abilities Expo, we now had to wrap our heads around paying $10,000 more than that! And that’s not including tax, title, extended warranty, and whatever other fees are tacked on. We’d be looking at probably around $100,000 for a brand-new van out the door!

I loved being able to pay cash for our first van and not having a car payment, but I knew that was not going to be an option this time around. We were going to have to finance some of this van, but when I ran the numbers through Calculator.net’s auto loan calculator, the monthly car payment was higher than I felt comfortable with. We have enough stress in our lives as it is. We didn’t need the added stress of a high car payment.

Realizing that a new van was still out of our reach, and growing increasingly nervous about how much longer our Caravan would go without needing a major repair, I started looking at used wheelchair accessible vans…something one or two years old without a lot of miles on it. Wheelchair accessible vehicles are a niche market, so I couldn’t browse the normal sites that have cars for sale. I also couldn’t browse the inventory on the websites of the half dozen or so Toyota dealerships within reasonable driving distance. We live in a large metropolitan area, and there are only three dealers that specialize in wheelchair accessible vehicles within 45 minutes of us. One of those dealers is part of a Dodge Chrysler Jeep RAM dealership, which was automatically taken off our list because they primarily carry Dodge and Chrysler vans, which we wanted to avoid due to the issues we had with our Dodge Grand Caravan. The second of those three dealers was also removed from our list because they exclusively sell Vantage Mobility vans. We have nothing against Vantage Mobility. We’ve just never had one of their modified vans. Our Caravan was modified by BraunAbility, and we were comfortable with the quality of their modifications. All the issues we had with the van were mechanical and had nothing to do with the modifications that BraunAbility did to the van.

The third local-ish dealer was the same one we used to purchase our Grand Caravan in 2014, MobilityWorks. They have dealerships across the country and sell both BraunAbility and Vantage Mobility (VMI) vehicles. One of the problems I ran into while looking at MobilityWorks’ website to see if I could get an idea of what a slightly used Sienna costs was that they rarely list the prices of vans that over $50,000. I also became quickly discouraged when I saw what a highly used van was selling for. I don’t remember the exact age and mileage, but there were a couple of vans that were six or seven years old with over 100,000 miles on them that they were selling for over $40,000. I don’t think I would even consider buying a van with over 100,000 miles, and I certainly wouldn’t want to spend that kind of money on it. They were Toyotas so they probably had a bit of life left in them, but it would still make me nervous.

I felt a little better when I found that BraunAbility’s Inventory site, BLVD.com, and an occasional “BraunAbility Toyota Sienna XLE Plus” Google search turned up newer used vans with pricing. But there was another problem. All of the results were nationwide. I often found myself looking through listings of vans and saying, “wow, that looks nice, and it’s priced well, too”, only to be followed by a “never mind, it’s too far away.” I did briefly think about how far I would be willing to travel to buy a van. I wasn’t opposed to going out of state if the price was right. Fortunately, we didn’t have to.

One of my searches on BLVD.com lead us to take a look at a 2023 Sienna that was about 45 minutes away from us. It had just over 5,000 miles on it and was priced at $72,900. It had the XLE Plus package, too, just like we wanted with the roof rails so we could put our cargo carrier on the roof for all of James’ stuff. The only issue was that the previous owner of the van was in a wheelchair, and there was a transfer seat for the driver’s seat. The transfer seat allowed him to wheel into the van, lock his wheelchair down in the back, swivel the driver’s seat around so that he could slide from his wheelchair into the driver’s seat, and then swivel it back into driving position. The guy said he could swap out the transfer seat for a regular seat, but it would probably cost around $1,500. It wasn’t a deal breaker for us; it would just increase the price a bit. We explained to him that we were just starting to seriously look at vans and that we needed to think about it.

When we got home, I used Calculator.net to see what our monthly payment would be on a van that cost us $75,000, and it came out to be less than I wanted to pay. Sweet! I was feeling good. But then came a pretty important question. BraunAbility has a 3 year/36,000-mile warranty that covers “substantial defects in materials and workmanship attributable to Braun of the conversion van frame, floor structural components, ramp, door and associated structural components, electrical components, including but not limited to switches, wires, connectors and the controller and interior appearance items such as floor covering and the lower door extension assemblies.” This warranty, however, does not cover “problems related to mis-operation, misuse, mishandling, neglect or abuse, including failure to maintain the product in accordance with the owner’s manual, or other routine maintenance such as inspections, lubricating, adjustments, tightening of screws, sealing, wheel alignments or rotating tires.” The key words being “failure to maintain the product in accordance with the owner’s manual”. BraunAbility’s Maintenance Schedule recommends the following services be performed every 6 months or 5,000 miles:

• • Inspect ramp access door system operation and alignment; clean and lube system
  • Inspect ramp system operation; clean and lube system
  • Inspect kneel system operation; clean and lube system (if applicable)
  • Inspect electronic control system for current software (if applicable)
  • Inspect undercarriage and ground effects
  • Inspect and maintain wheelchair tiedowns and occupant restraints

Knowing that they would probably deny a warranty claim if we didn’t follow the maintenance schedule, we would want to have it maintained by a trained technician. If we were to buy this van from this dealer 45-minutes away, would we want to travel all the way out there twice a year for service? We couldn’t just take it to a regular Toyota dealership as they probably don’t have technicians trained on wheelchair accessible vans.

I continued to do daily scans of BLVD.com and BraunAbility’s website to see if anything else popped up. There were a few Siennas with roof rails that were priced about the same as the Sienna we drove 45 minutes to look at. But they were all a further drive away and we’d run into the same issue with the maintenance.

At the end of October Stacy and I went to MobilityWorks. We sat down with the salesman, discussed our situation with our aging van, what we were looking for in a new(er) van, and that we were trying to get an idea of what a van would cost us out the door so we could figure out what our car payments would be. Stacy told him that we needed the rear floor area to be at least the size of our current Caravan because James’ wheelchair has a tray in the back which makes it a bit of a challenge to get him in the van and turn him so that he’s forward facing. The salesman told us we’d probably be looking at either the Chrysler Pacifica, or the Toyota Sienna; the Honda Odyssey is a bit smaller in the back.

Even though we were trying to stay away from Chrysler/Dodge, we took both a 2024 Pacifica and a 2024 Sienna for a test drive. The Pacifica had a much nicer interior and more rear head room than the Sienna. I also thought that the v6 engine in the Pacifica was smoother than the hybrid engine in the Sienna. Negatives against the Pacifica were our history of issues with our Caravan, a dial to shift the transmission instead of a regular shifter, and the gas mileage. Toyota is known for its reliability and the hybrid engine would save us quite a bit of money on gas: 36 MPG city / 36 MPG highway for the Sienna versus 19 MPG city / 28 MPG highway for the Pacifica.

We had always been leaning towards the Sienna, but we started wondering if we could afford one when we started talking about price. For a new Sienna with the XLE Plus package, we’d be looking in the mid- to upper $90,000 range. The Pacifica would be a bit cheaper at around $90,000. That would be out-the-door with taxes, title, and documentation fees included. Either way, we were looking at between $90- and $100,000 for a new van!

Stacy and I already knew that the price was going to be in that range, but hearing the words come out of the salesman’s mouth hit a bit harder. We both gasped. And then he said, “well, if you’re interested in buying a used van, we just bought back a 2023 Sienna that was purchased last year and only has around 5,000 miles on it. It hasn’t even made it onto our website yet, but we’re going to price it at $72,000.” Our ears perked up and we asked if we could look at it. It did have some minor cosmetic issues, but overall, it was practically a brand-new van. The salesman told us that if wanted to think about it, we could leave a $500 deposit, and they would hold it for us, which we did.

We went home, thought it over, and came to the conclusion that we’d be stupid not to go for it. It was a year old, had less than 5,000 miles on it, and was roughly $18,000 less than a brand-new van. But one question still remained: what would our monthly payments be? Our salesman emailed us an invoice, which included all costs, fees, discounts, and ended with a final price of what this van would cost us out the door. I took the numbers from that invoice, and put them into an Excel spreadsheet to make it a bit easier to read:

 

 

A couple of things I want to note here. The chassis price is the price of the van if it wasn’t modified. The conversion price is the price of the modifications that BraunAbility did to make it wheelchair accessible. Note that this is the depreciated price of the conversion. Just like a car depreciates over time, so does the conversion. You should also be aware that the conversion cost, not the total cost of the van, just the cost of the conversion to make it wheelchair accessible is tax deductible as a medical expense.

To be honest, I am not sure what the NMEDA Certification fee is. According to their website, National Mobility Equipment Dealers Association (NMEDA) “is the certifying body for the nationally recognized Quality Assurance Program (QAP) accreditation. Established in 1989, we are a 501(c)(6) non-profit trade association serving the auto mobility industry in the US and Canada. We provide education & training to our members and partners, and advocate for our industry before Congress, state legislatures and federal regulatory agencies.” I was not aware of this association until now and it looks like they have some good resources for consumers that are looking at buying a wheelchair accessible vehicle.

That $510 discount is the $500 deposit we put on the van to hold it, plus the $10 credit card processing fee.

The documentary, license, registration, and sale tax are all normal, but these might vary depending on where you live.

One thing I forgot to mention earlier was that when we took the Pacifica and Sienna for a test drive, the dealership had our Caravan appraised. We were both pretty surprised by the amount they were willing to give us for it. $9,500!! We couldn’t believe it!

Because the Sienna was a little bit bigger than the Caravan, we wanted to make sure it fit in our garage. I didn’t want to spend this kind of money on a car and not be able to park it in the garage. The salesman let me “borrow” it for a couple of hours so I could take it home. The good news is that it fit.

 

 

The bad news was that reality really started kicking in. Seeing the van sitting in our driveway made us realize that this was really happening. Now that we had an actual amount of how much this van was going to cost us, we needed to figure out how much we would have to put down in order to make our car payments low enough that we weren’t stressing every month for the next five or six years. We had been putting $500 into savings every month for the past nine months or so to get us used to having a $500 car payment, and to make sure we could actually afford a $500 car payment. Some months were a bit tough, but we always made a point of putting that $500 a month into savings. Then in September we got a letter in the mail from our mortgage company. Because our property taxes went up roughly 33%, there was a shortage in our escrow account. They gave us two choices: we could pay the $4,000 shortage in full, or we could divide the shortage evenly over the next twelve mortgage payments. We chose choice number two, which increased our mortgage payment by $350 a month!

I am not allowed overtime, so I am not able to put in extra hours at work to bring in extra money. Stacy, on the other hand, has been doing her best to pick up some additional dog walking gigs so that we could continue to put money away every month towards the van AND cover our increased mortgage bill.

We really wanted this van, so we made one last plea for donations to our fundraiser, and looked at where we could pull money from so that we could put a lot of money down on the van to get the car payment as low as possible, while still leaving some emergency funds in the bank. I can’t remember exactly when we started it, but we’ve had a separate bank account that we call “James Medical Fund” for as long as I can remember. We use that account solely for any supplies or equipment we buy for James that insurance doesn’t cover. We’ve been putting money into that account here and there, and any money that James gets for birthdays and holidays also goes into that account. Since the van is considered a medical expense, we decided to almost clear out that account. Between the money from the fundraiser, and what we pulled out of James Medical Fund, we had a decent amount to put down on this van.

While they were discussing the process of transferring funds out of our fundraiser, the woman asked if we had looked at obtaining a grant from Bridge to Mobility. We didn’t because this was the first time we had heard about them. She explained that they offered grants of up to $5,000 towards the purchase of a wheelchair accessible vehicle. We decided that it wouldn’t hurt to apply and see. If they only gave us $500 or $1,000, it would still help in lowering the amount we had to finance and the monthly payments on the loan. They actually came back and awarded us the full $5,000! Here is a four-minute video about Bridge to Mobility:

 

 

The last remaining piece was financing the remainder of the van, because we certainly didn’t have $60,000. We filled out a credit application through MobilityWorks and were approved by one bank and denied by another. When the finance manager told us the interest rate from the bank that approved us, I think my heart stopped for a minute. There was no way that I was paying 10% interest on a car loan! I asked if the other bank gave a reason for denying us, and he said it was because of lack of documentation. I called the bank to find out what documentation they were missing from us, and it turned out that they were missing documentation from MobilityWorks. I called the finance manager back, who then called the bank to get things sorted out. He called me back about an hour later to let me know that we were approved at 7.84%. Still high, but better than 10%. We’ve been really spoiled the last several years with interest rates being so low that it was a bit hard to swallow paying that much in interest, but we decided to do it. I made sure that there were no pre-payment penalties on the loan so that if we get some extra money somewhere, we can throw it at this loan and pay it off faster.

Then came the fun part. Filling out all that lovely paperwork at the dealership to buy our new van. Yes, I said paper. The stuff that is made from trees. It’s 2024. Why hasn’t everything been digitized by now? Why do companies still insist on paper signatures that will probably eventually be scanned into a computer system anyway? Why can’t they just skip the paper altogether and go straight to digital? Okay, rant over. Once we had signed all the paperwork, the salesman handed Stacy the key fob and gave us a run through of some of the features on the van. He had already shown us how to operate the wheelchair ramp when we first looked at the van, but before he sent us home in our new van, he wanted to just go over some of the other features of the van not related to the modifications…the radio and navigation, the different menus and settings that can be found within the display in the instrument cluster, etc.

There was one last thing we had to do before he let us go. Bridge to Mobility requested a video of us with the van with a brief statement about where we plan to go with our new van. James wasn’t with us because he was in school, and I am not good in front of a camera, so Stacy did it solo. She explained that it had been a while since we had gone on vacation, and we would probably take a trip down to Tennessee.

Here’s a pic of Stacy with our new van at the dealership before we took it home:

 

 

We’ve always named our cars, with the name needing to start with the same letter as the car model. The Caravan was Clifford, aka “Clifford, the Big Red Van”. We tossed around a few “S” names for the Sienna, and Stacy decided to go with Stella. After we finalized the purchase of the van, we had a celebratory lunch at a restaurant next door to the dealership. As we were about to walk into the restaurant, something on the door caught my eye:

 

 

It was almost as if it was meant to be.

Here’s a picture of James taking his first ride in his new set of wheels:

 

 

It’s kind of funny how you get so attached to an inanimate object. Stacy and I both cried on our way to the dealership to buy the new van. Clifford was with us for 10 years. She was part of the family. Hopefully she’ll provide at least a couple of years of trouble-free accessible transportation to the next owners.

 

 

We are extremely grateful to everyone that played a part in us getting this van: the donors, Help Hope Live, Bridge to Mobility, MobilityWorks, and anybody else that I may be forgetting. I think I said in the beginning of this long ass blog post that if it wasn’t for you, buying this van would not have been possible. It’s true. We would not have been able to pull this off if it hadn’t been for you. Thank you all!

 

Resources

Buying a car can be a stressful experience. I think it’s even more stressful to buy a wheelchair accessible vehicle because they are so much more expensive. Families like ours that have a special needs child are often strapped for cash because they often don’t have two full-time incomes because one of the parents is the primary caregiver. They also have the extra financial burden of medical expenses that insurance doesn’t cover.

This is a list of resources we used in the process of buying a new van. Hopefully this list can help another family do the same.

 

ams vans – Wheelchair accessible vehicle dealer.

BLVD.com – Listings of new and used wheelchair accessible vehicles for sale.

BraunAbility – Manufacturer of wheelchair accessible vehicles and other mobility products.

Bridge to Mobility – Offers grants of up to $5,000 for the purchase of a wheelchair accessible vehicle.

Calculator.net’s auto loan calculator – A calculator that be used to either figure out what your car payment would be based on the price of the vehicle, or how much you can spend on a vehicle based on what you want your car payment to be.

Help Hope Live – Fundraising.

MobilityWorks – Wheelchair accessible vehicle dealer.

National Mobility Equipment Dealers Association (NMEDA) – Has lots of informative consumer resources for those looking to buy a wheelchair accessible vehicle.

Vantage Mobility (VMI) – Wheelchair accessible vehicle manufacturer.