Greetings J and welcome to the forum now that you are no longer _lurking_
Hopeful fast & painless recovery on the keying to metal fiasco. & sorry to hear you had to ditch the chevy AWD. And i agree on the posts on tires. We have mountain-stamped M/S pizza cutters on ours and they do great year round.
As you might have read elsewhere our 2010 chevy (5.3 v8) AWD is my wife's DD to/from work about 10 miles round trip. We are always fully loaded for adventure and typically with full tanks and the two of us weigh in at about 6800 to 6900 lbs at the local scales. We are getting about 14mpg around town and ~16/17 on the open road. For what one gets in return (full comfy bed/bath/kitchenette) we feel it is well worth the few extra bucks. And the safety, as you know, on the typical AWD rig is great in our WET PNW weather. Here on the coast with ~80 inches of annual rainfall we switched over to AWD rigs about 20 years ago (volvo wagons before the chevy van).
Best wishes on your hunt for the van! And Van Specialties is an excellent place/crew!!! If there is a Van 2.0 they will most likely build the interior also.
Cheers,
Thom