What you’re looking at isn’t the iconic 1983 GMC Vandura that served as transportation for the A-Team, but it is one of six officially licensed to promote the show in the 1980s. This example is a 1979 GMC Vandura to be precise. And it’s going up for auction in January.
The auction is for charity, to benefit the J. Kruse Education Center which helps students and veterans. This example looks pretty clean on the outside but it’s no spring chicken, with 90,297 miles shown on the odometer and the following engine bay:
Which is what you want, really, because the A-Team wasn’t taking their Vandura to Concours events, you fool. Too much mercenary work to do.
The Vandura — along with its Chevy counterpart, the Beauville — was made virtually unchanged by GM for almost three decades. That would be appealing for TV producers who wanted to make a show that would end up with a few vehicles destroyed. (Jerry Garrett talked to Craig Baxley, an A-Team stunt coordinator in 2010, who said that four Vanduras were destroyed in the course of making the show. “Anytime you do a major jump, that’s usually the end of the vehicle,” Baxley said.)
The fact that they were common and unchanged would also be appealing to the A-Team itself, since parts would be easily available because this thing is going to get roughed up. There is soldier of fortune work that needs to get done, after all. The modern soldier of fortune operates, of course, a Chevy Express with a custom paint job and certain other modifications in the interior. Wait a few decades and you’ll see those cars turn up at auction too.
