The Transit can tow up to 5,000 pounds but the Nissan can tow up to twice that. Both have very little visibility out the back, but both also have very good side mirrors and come with back up cameras.Īccording to the various reviews, the Transit gets better gas mileage but the Nissan has more power for towing. As you can see in the photos above, the Nissan has a truck front which takes up more space while the Transit only sticks out just a bit in front. The interesting thing is that both vehicles are about the same length and seem to handle turns and getting around similarly. Still, the Transit allow you to take out the seats two or three at a time, so we can seat the exact number we want to and use the rest for cargo space. Both have very little cargo room behind the last row of seats, but the NV has about 6 or 8 inches more space there. The Nissan NV only seats 12 which means we'd use every seat. We debated getting a Nissan NV and were even able to track down a nice used one, but we went with the Ford because it is more flexible for our family. The Transits have only been out since 2015, but because they are widely in use as shuttle vehicles, there are a lot more used ones available for purchase. But they are very hard to find used and the new price is higher than the new Transits. The Nissans have been out since 2013 and all of my large family friends who own one love them. Some models have improved since then, but as we did our research, we quickly narrowed the list down to either the Nissan NV 12 passenger van or the Ford Transit 15 passenger. We hated the bench seats with no headrests and no side airbags. Our old van was serviceable, but the safety features were lacking. Since I had a hard time coming across reviews for these kinds of vehicles that answered the questions I was most interested in, I figured I should write one about our experience and our new Ford Transit. Then we added up how much would be lost in probable depreciation and other costs of an additional van over those years, divided it by the years of service and decided it was worth it. The clincher for us was when we did the math and realized that even if Benji is our last baby, it will be six years before we all fit back into my Sienna. But then we also thought about how much nicer it would be to take just one van on vacations and to various family adventures, and how it would save some wear and tear on our 12-year-old cars. Perhaps we should just continue the status quo and continue to save the money. So we began to discuss buying another big van.Īt first, we figured our oldest would be off to college in a year, then her flight would be followed by many of the others in just a few more years. The one annoyance was having to take two cars on all our family trips, and we figured the inconvenience was worth the money savings.īut this summer, with ten kids in the family now and all the coming and going, I found we had a lot more occasions where I wished we had a vehicle that could fit our whole family, and a lot more times where we had to really think through the logistics of who would go where and when and how. With our kids being older, we almost always have someone old enough to babysit at home, so running kids to activities is no big deal.

We figured we'd save on gas, insurance, and the yearly battery replacements caused by having it sit unused for months at a time and just see how it went. We took the van on trips but otherwise ignored it, poor thing. It was older and more beat up than our other two vehicles and we rarely had to take the whole family places around town, so for the most part, we were able to make do with my 8 passenger Sienna and my husband's 7 passenger Highlander. Three years ago, we sold our 1999 Chevy Express because we felt like it was mostly taking up space in our driveway. One of the things that has occupied a lot of time and energy the last two months was our search for a family vehicle. My oldest is a senior, my youngest a 14-month-old who is still not sleeping through the night (we're working on it), and though I find myself home with 'only' two kids during the school day this year, I feel like I have yet to catch my breath. Life continues to move along at a whirlwind pace for us.

2016 ford 12 passenger van mpg