The compact commercial van died in America. Ram just bet $39,995 that it shouldn’t have.
Stellantis has announced pricing for the 2027 Ram ProMaster City, a mid-size van entering a market segment that currently has zero competitors. The base Tradesman Cargo trim starts at $39,995 including destination, making it the cheapest commercial van you can buy in the United States. The SLT Cargo bumps to $41,495, while Passenger Wagon versions range from $42,695 to $44,195.
Those numbers undercut every full-size van on sale today, and there’s nothing else in this size class left to compare it to. The old Nissan NV200 is gone. The Ford Transit Connect is dead. The previous ProMaster City, based on the Fiat Doblò, was quietly shelved.
For a couple of years, if you wanted a commercial van smaller than a Transit or Sprinter, you were out of luck.
The new ProMaster City is not the same vehicle it replaces. It’s bigger in every dimension, built on the Citroen Jumpy platform sold in various markets as the Fiat Scudo, Peugeot Expert, and Opel Vivaro. At 210 inches long, it stretches nearly two feet beyond its predecessor, with height climbing 2.7 inches to 76.7 inches and width growing 3.6 inches to 75.7 inches.
That pushes it into mid-size territory, closer to the ancient Chevy Express in footprint, though still meaningfully smaller.
Under the hood sits a turbocharged 1.6-liter four-cylinder producing 166 horsepower and 221 pound-feet of torque, routed to the front wheels through an eight-speed automatic. Towing and payload both cap at 2,000 pounds, and cargo volume measures 167 cubic feet. None of those figures will threaten a Ford Transit, which can tow 6,900 pounds and haul over 5,100.
But they don’t need to. This van is aimed at plumbers, florists, caterers, and delivery operators who don’t need a rolling warehouse and would rather not park one.
Standard equipment is generous for a work van. Every ProMaster City gets a 10-inch touchscreen with navigation, Apple CarPlay, and Android Auto, a 10-inch digital gauge cluster, a 5-inch digital rearview mirror, heated front seats, and automatic up/down windows. The SLT adds a heated steering wheel, wireless phone charger, fog lamps, 17-inch aluminum wheels, and front parking sensors.
Body-colored bumpers come along for the ride, a nod to owners who might occasionally park this thing somewhere other than a job site. Production begins later this year at Stellantis’s plant in Bursa, Turkey, with first deliveries expected in early 2027.
The real question is whether American buyers still want what Ram is selling. The compact van segment didn’t collapse because the vehicles were bad. It collapsed because trucks and full-size vans ate the market from above while crossovers nibbled from below.
Fleet managers drifted toward bigger rigs with more capacity, and retail buyers never loved vans to begin with.
Ram is gambling that the pendulum has swung too far. That there are enough small business owners tired of wrestling a 22-foot Transit through downtown traffic, enough operators whose daily loads don’t justify $55,000 worth of full-size van and the fuel it drinks. At just under $40,000 with front-wheel drive and a frugal turbo four, the ProMaster City offers a proposition nobody else is making right now.
Stellantis has the segment entirely to itself. Whether that means they’ve spotted an opportunity or simply found a hole in the market that exists for a reason is something only order books will answer.
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