The single most useful thing you can do before contacting anyone about an accessible vehicle is spend ten minutes with a tape measure. These nine numbers rule out entire categories of vehicle before you have a chance to fall in love with the wrong one.
Write them down. Keep them in your phone. Give them to every dealer and builder you talk to.
The chair
1. Overall width
At the widest point, which is usually the wheels or the armrests — not the seat. This sets the minimum door opening and the minimum interior channel.
2. Overall length
Front of the footplates to the back of the rear wheels or anti-tip bars. Longer than people expect, especially on power chairs with elevating legrests.
3. Seated height
Floor to the top of your head while seated in the chair. This is the number that decides whether you clear the door opening, and it is the one most often forgotten. If the chair tilts or elevates, measure at the height you'll actually travel in.
4. Weight of the chair
From the documentation, not an estimate, and with the batteries in. "Transport weight" is a different and much lower number.
5. Weight of chair plus occupant
Add your own weight. This combined figure is what a lift is rated against, and it is what we will ask for first.
6. Turning radius
Roughly, the diameter of the smallest circle the chair can turn within. Determines whether you can reposition inside the vehicle or only travel straight in and straight out.
The places it has to work
7. Garage door height and depth
Height first — a high-roof Sprinter will not fit under many residential garage doors, and finding that out after delivery is a bad day. Depth matters if you'll deploy a rear ramp inside.
8. Clear space beside your parking spot
At home, and at wherever you go daily. A side-entry ramp wants roughly eight feet. This one number decides side versus rear entry more often than anything else — see the eight feet that decides it.
9. Driveway or approach slope
A ramp deployed onto a downhill slope is steeper than the same ramp on the flat, and a chair turning across a cross-slope can feel unstable. If your driveway pitches noticeably, say so early.
One more, if you can get it
How many people need to ride, and how often all of them at once. Seat count drives the floor plan as hard as the chair does, and it's the constraint that most often forces a bigger vehicle than the chair alone would need.
Why this saves you money
Measurements narrow the field before anyone starts selling. A builder who knows your seated height and combined weight on the first call can tell you in five minutes that a minivan conversion won't work for you — instead of letting you spend three weeks considering one.
They also protect you from the most expensive mistake in this category: buying a vehicle that technically accommodates the chair but is miserable to use daily. Clearance of an inch is not clearance. You want room to be imprecise on a bad day.
Then come and try it
Numbers narrow the field; they don't make the decision. Once two or three options survive the measurements, go and use them with your own chair. We keep a mobility Sprinter in stock year-round so there's always something to roll onto — bring your list and we'll work through it against the actual vehicle.