Panel van

A panel van, also known as a delivery van (United Kingdom), blind van, car-derived van or sedan delivery (United States), is a small cargo vehicle with a passenger car chassis, typically with a single front bench seat and no side windows behind the B-pillar. Panel vans are smaller than panel trucks or cargo vans, both of which use body-on-frame truck chassis.^[1]

As they are derived from passenger cars, the development of panel vans is typically closely linked with the passenger car models upon which they depend. North American panel vans were initially based upon the two-door station wagon models, while Europe's narrower roads dictated that panel vans utilize the smaller donor chassis of subcompact cars in that market. In Australia, panel vans were a development of the ute, a small pickup truck based on a passenger car chassis, e.g. Holden Ute, often using the longer wheelbase of a station wagon chassis.

Panel vans were a well-established body type by the end of the 1920s.

Panel vans have experienced divergent evolution in America, Europe, and Australia, as a result of the different passenger car platforms upon which panel vans are based in each region.

A panel van is often known as a "delivery" or "sedan delivery" in North America. It is an older term that usually only applies to station wagon–based vehicles (sedan deliveries/delivery wagons) such as the Chevrolet Delray and Ford Courier, or pickup-based vans (panel deliveries). Large, boxy unibody vans based on truck platforms (such as the Ford Transit, Ram ProMaster, and Chevrolet Express) as well as smaller unibody vans (like the Ford Transit Connect and Ram Promaster City) are usually referred to as cargo vans or just panel vans. Larger vehicles built on a chassis cab with a custom cargo box are usually called box trucks or moving vans.

In the late 1920s, Ford produced "Town Car Delivery" and "Wood Panel Delivery" as part of the Ford Model A model range. Later Plymouth produced a sedan delivery from 1935 until 1941. Pontiac produced deliveries until 1953 in the U.S. and until 1958 in Canada based on the Pontiac Pathfinder. Sedan delivery models were usually produced in small quantities of 200 or less, for example 449 Canadian Pontiac sedan deliveries were built in 1958.^{[citation needed]}

From 1959 on, the sedan delivery was no longer practical; it was phased out in 1960 as a Chevrolet model, so the requisite Chevrolet body was no longer available. With the growing sales of the Volkswagen Type 2 and the introduction of compact vans, sedan deliveries faded from the scene. Chevrolet dropped the body type after 1960, while Ford moved it to the Falcon line-up until 1965.

In the 1970s, Chevrolet and Ford offered subcompact sedan deliveries with the Chevrolet Vega Panel Express and the Ford Pinto Panel Wagon. The Vega Panel Express was introduced in September 1970 and it was Chevy's first sedan delivery in ten years since the final full-size model was offered in 1960. The Vega Panel Express body style accounted for less than 2% of the total Chevrolet Vegas produced during the 1971 through 1975 model years. First-year sales of the Vega Panel Express peaked at 7,800 units and after leveling off to 4,000 units per year, only 1,525 were sold in 1975. The Pontiac Astre Panel, Pontiac's version of the Vega Panel Express, was available in Canada in the 1973–75 model years and in the US for 1975. The Pinto Panel Wagon was introduced in 1976 and was offered in both a commercial and a "factory customized" Pinto Cruising Wagon version that featured a round porthole style window on each side. The Ford Courier name, previously used for Ford sedan delivery vans, began to be used with Ford's import pickup truck line.