As a commercial vehicle, the 2006 express van was not crash tested by ANCAP when it was released. These days, the van carries a one-star safety rating as a used car, based on real-world crash data.

Fundamentally, the Express is an old design and doesn’t make use of many of the most basic safety features that passenger cars of the day had. The forward seating position also has an effect on crash safety and, if you look at newer van designs, you’ll often see that the front-seat passengers are placed farther back in the vehicle as a result. The bottom line is that there are better choices if crash safety is your major concern.

If it's as simple as the AdBlue sensor not telling the computer that more AdBlue has been added to the tank, then yes, it would seem like a pretty simple fix. But it may not be that simple. If there's a blockage in the tank or the line that takes the AdBlue to the car's exhaust (where it's injected into the exhaust to reduce harmful tailpipe emissions) then the car may still 'think' that there's no AdBlue on board.

There could also be more to restarting an engine that has shut itself down than simply adding more AdBlue, too. Perhaps there's a specific restarting procedure that has to be followed, perhaps involving resetting the computer manually. One would imagine, however, that a dealership that sells the cars new would be aware of this.

Plenty of people have successfully converted vans and small busses into campervans. The reason some are more successful than others is often down to the previous life the vehicle has lived and what sort of preventative maintenance it has been treated to.

A vehicle that has been serviced properly and used carefully is likely to be a good thing even with a few years and plenty of kilometres on board. But one that has been used and abused and neglected in terms of maintenance is not a vehicle you want to be buying second-hand, regardless of make or model.

So make sure the vehicle has a complete service history and try to find out a bit about what it was used for. Does it have a big tow-bar fitted? If so, it's probably towed some heavy loads and that places stresses on every part of the vehicle. Is there any sign-writing on the vehicle (or shadows on the paint where corporate logos once were)? If so, the vehicle has almost certainly been used commercially and may or may not have been driven sympathetically by the company apprentice.

Treat it like an archaeology project, and you'll be amazed what you can learn. Meantime, a privately owned Express van with full service history is the one you want, but be prepared to pay more for such a thing.