Minivans are only un-cool until you are forced to appreciate their practicality. They can transport groups of kids and all their gear, a bunch of dogs, a surprising amount of furniture or even large sheets of lumber or drywall. I would only consider replacing my minivan with an electric minivan.
My wife and I don't have kids (yet) but absolutely love our Pacifica minivan. It fits 4x8 sheets of plywood in the back perfectly (it was designed this way), all of the seats fold down into the floor, which is awesome, and it can tow a trailer.
We actually got it because it meant we could more easily pack more things to burning man every year. Since then we've done tons of road trips all over the country, and build the back of the van into a bed.
Love that car. Hoping to upgrade to a hybrid with the comma.ai autopilot eventually.
I inherited my family’s old minivan while I was at college—a small, private one where the students lived on campus and most didn’t have their own vehicles. Overnight my popularity skyrocketed.
Not full electric, but we've been loving our Pacifica PHEV. You do sacrifice a bit of practicality—no towing capability, and the middle seats don't fold into the floor like the gas version (the battery is down there)—but in the summer we sometimes go months without refueling.
I fully concur on the practicality. The only vehicle more versatile than a minivan is full-size van (my family's conversion van growing up was insanely useful).
Thanks for the heads up on the PHEV and the stow-and-go seats. That one would be a no-go for us because we it to haul stuff all the time. With the seats fully stowed it's practically as good as a pickup truck.
Of course, you have to get all the toy cars and goldfish crackers off the floor first if you want the seats to actually stow.
I've found the goldfish crackers readily crush themselves out of the way and the dust vacuums up fairly easily, especially if left to age for at least three months. Toy cars can definitely bugger up latches and hinges, though.
It was the unibody minivan that killed their reputation.
Full size vans were larger, yes, but due to their construction being based on legacy truck platforms, they offered a wildly inferior driving experience. They got single digit gas mileage (many had dual gas tanks to compensate), were clumsy to park, were rear-wheel drive, relatively more expensive to maintain, and offered a stiff and unrefined ride.
When the Caravan was introduced, it was better in every single way that would be relevant for the average family.
Stuff like the Ford Transit is a lot better than the Econoline it replaced, but they didn't bring it to the US until they were about 29 years too late.
In the 80s people didn't care that much. An 80s van is still gonna beat an 80s car in terms of crash test results. And the bad results are only for the driver's legs. The kids in rows 2/3/4 are safe as can be
Don't forget the 5th row. My van has 15 seats. I'll fill the final seat this summer.
The safety problem is that most drivers can't deal well with a suspension that lets the vehicle movement lag well behind the driver inputs. Drivers would roll the vans over while driving on perfectly straight roads with good pavement. It's the same as pilot-in-the-loop oscillation. When the vehicle has a delayed response, the operator will overdo the input. That then needs to be corrected, but the correction may also be overdone. Each mistake leads to another mistake of larger magnitude in the opposite direction.
The extended-body vans like mine are particularly bad. When the body got extended, the rear axle didn't get moved rearward. Instead, the read tire pressure was increased to compensate for bad axle location.
Non-professional drivers often got asked to drive these vans for daycare, church groups, and other group activities. The problem got so bad that the federal government mandated that states act to keep the vans from being used for daycare and similar uses. Each state did something different. My state uses a $250,000 fine against the original dealer that sold the vehicle new, even if the vehicle was subsequently sold. This totally shut down new vehicle sales. The vans can be leased however, and they can be purchased coming off of a lease. As a result, all vans are provisioned as preferred by the rental companies. (white, naturally aspirated gasoline V8, cloth seats, etc.)
It depends on how you count: 1 unborn, 1 miscarriage, 2 legal adults still here, and 10 others. That could add up to 10, 11, 12, 13, or 14. All are from the same mother.
Car seats go in rows 2 and 3, since those are easiest to reach from the side door. It helps that our state hasn't totally caved to the car seat industry lobbying.
I have good memories of growing up in the 90s with a fullsize van as the family vehicle.
The most 90s thing of all was probably my dad plugging an inverter into the cigarette lighter so that he could power a SNES and 10" TV on our 24-hour drive to Pennsylvania to pacify us kids. That was peak existence for young me.
Sometimes a Fiat is the only reasonable option. That was the case when I bought my smallest car. Despite the small exterior size, the 500L is really roomy on the inside. It works for a person who is 6'10" (208 cm) tall, leaving enough room to sit up straight and wear a hat. None of the normal large cars (SUV, minivan, pickup, etc.) were as good. With the short length and small turn radius, parking is very easy.
I've never done the calculation, but we haven't had anything major come up yet on our 2017. We did have a corrosion problem on the aluminum hood out of warranty, and Chrysler fixed it for free.
We do a lot of cross country trips visiting family and my wife and I will alternate driving. If passenger gets tired of looking at the road or wants to get some sleep they usually hop over the center console and go hang out in the power reclining 3rd row. 2 kids ride in the 2 center captain chairs and one in the 3rd. Larger dog (90 lb) usually wanders around between everything. We usually put a cargo box on top so we can keep the cabin cleaner but we'd still fit without it.
I also own a top trim mid-sized luxary SUV and I'd say the limited pacifica (plus all packages) is easily the go-to option for comfort on road trips. Its no contest how much better something like that is compared to what basically equates to a larger sedan with a big trunk. Maybe something like a suburban or a yukon xl could compete but thats about all I'd think might.
Great driver and front passenger comfort. I haven't heard the kids complain about the rest of the seating. I've sat in the middle row a couple times and being tall-ish it wasn't as good as the front but still pretty decent.
The ride itself is great, and its not noisy. There's an active noise cancellation system, not sure if it does anything as I don't think I can turn it off to compare.
don't SUV's fulfil that niche now? Basically station wagons with a slightly higher driving position?
source: Drive a Kia Sorrento with 7 seats - two in the back row that flip up.
Sure but when I was young it wasn't mandated for children to be in car seats until the age of 8 like TFA mentions. I was sitting in the back seat but I was definitely not in a car seat once I was around 4-5.
When I was young you could fit 6 in a sedan and 8 in a station wagon. Bench seats in the front have gone away (I assume due to airbags). We didn't have a big family, but on car-pools, I was the smallest so I always got stuck straddling the stick shift for the cars that had the shifter on the floor.
Throw in one kids best friend who is always around and maybe a grandparent who lives alone, going up to a 7 seater starts to get appealing pretty quickly.
If your kids have friends, you'll probably find yourself driving around as many kids as that fairly often. I was raised in a family of five and my parents had a minivan because nothing smaller would have been practical. Even if you can technically squeeze 3 kids into the back of a sedan, good luck going more than 30 minutes away without fights breaking out. And even if your kids are particularly well mannered, they still won't be comfortable. If you're driving a few hours to visit family, do you want to have a headache from fighting kids when you get there? Or kids in sour moods because their sibling wouldn't stop elbowing them?
With today's car seats, it can be made to work but it's a challenge. Realistically 2 kids in car seats makes the middle seat of anything but the largest cars impractical. At which point you are going up an extra row of seats, 6 seat layouts are uncommon.
You can't fill every back seat with a car seat. You will have issues accessing the rear if you put 3 in the middle row, the rear seat often isn't wide enough to accommodate three seats
