Last week, I joined fellow car writer Andrew Ganz on a four-day trip to Northern England, with one of Great Britain’s two Ewe Pullet-style self-service junkyards as our primary destination. This was the U-Pull-It in York, and today’s Junkyard Scrapyard Find is one of the more interesting products of the Société Européene de Véhicules Légers during the 2000s.
Sevel S.P.A. began life in 1978 as a joint venture between Fiat and the PSA Group and is now part of the mighty Amsterdam-based Stellantis Empire. This van is a third-generation Fiat Fiorino, which PSA Peugeot Citroën sold with Citroën Nemo and Peugeot Bipper badging. Thanks to FCA, it was sold as the Ram V700 in Chile.
U-Pull-It is owned by Dallas-based Copart and runs two self-service yards in the United Kingdom. The York facility is much closer to Heathrow Airport (to which there are cheap nonstop flights from Denver) than the one in Edinburgh, so we rented a Mercedes-Benz A-Class saloon and drove the four hours north to York (stopping at a breaker’s yard near Nottingham to grab some Euro-market XJ Cherokee taillights, as one does).
The inventory at U-Pull-It York is well-organized and the employees are friendly (if somewhat difficult to understand). The Peugeot, Renault and Vauxhall sections are the biggest, which made for a fascinating scrapyard day for a couple of American car aficionados. Sure, it was 33°F and very damp out, but English winter weather make you tough.
Out front, they sell late-model runners for cheap. How about a Renault Modus with good title for just £695?
This van’s original owner was Her Majesty’s government, though the Royal Mail was fully privatised a few years after its purchase.
This engine is a 1.4-liter HDi turbodiesel, developed by a partnership that included, Mazda, Ford and the PSA Group. It was rated at 67 horsepower and 118 pound-feet.
Curb weight is well under 3,000 pounds, but even so it must have been difficult to get a tall van full of mail going fast enough to hit the 70 mph limiter.
Fortunately for its drivers, this van was equipped with a five-speed manual transmission. Imagine the United States Postal Service requiring its carriers to work a manual transmission in 2010! Even most examples of the Jeep DJ Mail Dispatcher were slushbox-equipped when purchased by Uncle Sam.
For such a small van, the cabin seems spacious and comfortable.
There’s a sliding door on the left (sidewalk) side and plenty of space in the cargo compartment.
In back, a pair of asymmetric rear doors. A seriously useful delivery van with great fuel economy and French seats. What more could a mailman ask for?
It’s extremely unlikely that FCA ever considered bringing the Fiorino cargo van over to the United States, but the Bipper Tepee (aka Fiorino Qubo) passenger version might have found a cult following among outdoorsy American families. Just kidding— most car shoppers over here would have eaten a potato bug rather than be seen anywhere near a Bipper Tepee. By the way, I now own this Bipper emblem, along with dozens of others from my whirlwind English scrapyard trip.
Did rust doom it? We can’t know, though U-Pull-It’s photos of this van show the gauges with the ignition on and a final mileage of just 127,848 miles.
After a productive day of photographing discarded examples of everything from a Mitsubishi i to one of the very last MGs ever built in Britain (you’ll see all of them soon enough, here and at the other publications that employ me), we enjoyed a spicy Indian meal and then headed over to Brew York’s Taproom for a selection of their excellent stouts and porters. They’ll sell four third-pints for the price of a pint, which I recommend.
It’s the new low-emission van designed for the city. Seen in all the tightest spaces and all the best places.
Equally at home on the Great Wall of China or the Moon.
The FDM ads for this van family appear to be the most fun. Comacité. Maniabilité.
2010 Peugeot Bipper Royal Mail cargo van in English junkyard.
2010 Peugeot Bipper Royal Mail cargo van in English junkyard.
2010 Peugeot Bipper Royal Mail cargo van in English junkyard.
2010 Peugeot Bipper Royal Mail cargo van in English junkyard.
2010 Peugeot Bipper Royal Mail cargo van in English junkyard.
2010 Peugeot Bipper Royal Mail cargo van in English junkyard.
2010 Peugeot Bipper Royal Mail cargo van in English junkyard.
2010 Peugeot Bipper Royal Mail cargo van in English junkyard.
2010 Peugeot Bipper Royal Mail cargo van in English junkyard.
2010 Peugeot Bipper Royal Mail cargo van in English junkyard.
2010 Peugeot Bipper Royal Mail cargo van in English junkyard.
2010 Peugeot Bipper Royal Mail cargo van in English junkyard.
2010 Peugeot Bipper Royal Mail cargo van in English junkyard.
2010 Peugeot Bipper Royal Mail cargo van in English junkyard.
2010 Peugeot Bipper Royal Mail cargo van in English junkyard.
2010 Peugeot Bipper Royal Mail cargo van in English junkyard.
[Images: The Author]
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