Minivans are way more exciting than the internet gives them credit for. Their unique shape and weight distribution make them surprisingly fun to sling around corners. I’ve been testing cars for nearly a decade, and I’ve never been bored behind the wheel of a van.
My prior career with Road & Track Magazine meant lots of seat time in minivans as the driver of a camera car, where a photographer or videographer would lean off the back bumper or out the side of a sliding door to capture a close-following sports car. Many of those photoshoots took place on race tracks. And to make the photos look good, the camera car had to be going fast. You see where this is going, right?
It was during this time that I realized what a blast minivans could be on a race track. Since those days of slapping curbs in rental Town & Countries, I’ve always wanted to take a minivan to a proper track day to see what it could do. But someone already beat me to it.
That person is Gino Manley. For the past month, the Florida-born car salesman turned pro-racer has been publishing videos of minivans driving flat-out at autocross events and real-deal race tracks like Atlanta Motorsports Park and Road Atlanta, going viral in the process. And it looks like he’s having an absolute blast. His first video, published in late August, shows a Honda Odyssey being followed closely by a Chrysler Pacifica as the two vans are being pushed at AMP. They even managed to get a point-by by a Corvette (they were probably on a cool-down lap, but still).
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Manley’s next van-themed video, published a day later, gives us a look at the battle from inside the Odyssey. Though the vans weren’t going very fast, the giggles emerging from behind the camera suggest speed didn’t need to be a factor in the excitement. The caption says it all:
I was one of a handful of Americans who ran the 24 Hours Of Nurburgring this year… but this was my best drive this year. The Chrysler Pacifica had heart.
Over the phone, Manley told me the stunt was totally unplanned.
“I’m a part of a track day group in Atlanta called Jzilla Track Days,” he told me. “[That’s] where I basically got my start in track day stuff and racing, so I’ve been with them for years, and James, who owns the group, we became very good friends and help him with a lot of media stuff.”
“Every year, at Atlanta Motorsports Park, we run a track day dedicated just for ladies,” he continues. “You have to be a woman, so a lot of the fellows will bring their wives, or girlfriends, or daughters—let’s call it a novice track day.”
Manley goes on to say the chief instructor, a man named Rick, decided it’d be funny to drive his wife’s Odyssey in one of the run groups. Manley thought that’d be a great idea, so he borrowed one of the Pacifica rentals and joined him. A new internet legend was born.
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Manley’s comments were flooded with questions about why the vans were participating in what looked to be a standard track day event. In another post showing the two vans carving even more corners at AMP, he revealed the vans didn’t last very long on track.
A lot of questions about van wars… They were completely stock. We are both pretty experienced drivers in our group and this was more or less an unplanned demo run. We would get about 3 laps before the brakes overheated. We went out in a slow run group and never held traffic up. And we would 100% do it again.
Having experienced failing minivan brakes on race tracks in the past, I can definitely relate. Brakes are the one thing I’d definitely upgrade before I participate in a real track event with a van. After a few laps, the stock units will melt themselves into jelly.
In my conversation with Manley, he seemed to understand why there was such a strong reaction online to seeing the vans getting pushed on track.
“I’ve raced all around the country, and that’s generally the team van when you fly in and you get one [as a rental],” Manley told me. “I think it struck a nerve with the racing community because everyone’s driven these vans and everyone’s been like, ‘Man, this thing’s got a lot of power. I wonder what it would be like [on a race track].’ I think in some ways, [they were] living vicariously through [me] actually doing it.”
Manley took another rental Pacifica to Road Atlanta to see if he could break the two-minute barrier around the legendary Southeastern road course. That, too, was an unplanned feat. “That morning, I was like, ‘You know, it would be really, really funny if we try just to see if I grabbed an AIM [lap timer] and see what this thing could do,'” he told me.
He explains why he picked the Pacifica in another Instagram post:
If you’re going to make a hot lap in a minivan, your options are very limited. You’ll have the Pacifica, the Sienna, the Honda Odyssey, and, of course, the Kia Carnival.
[…]
We opted for the Pacifica because the one we used happened to be an S package van—mechanically the same as a regular Pacifica, however, this one did have the optional 20-inch wheel package, which came on a slightly more aggressive all-season tire. I’m a fan of the Pacifica myself. I have some experience on the platform.
I’m a big fan of the 286-horsepower Pentastar. I do like the 9-speed automatic. Coincidentally, if you leave the automatic in low gear, it holds gears better than some sporty automatic transmissions I’ve driven in sports cars, so I was a big fan of that. This one did have Stow ‘n Go, so we left the seats down to keep the center of gravity lower.
Instead of relying on phone cameras from onlookers, Manley had a professional video team on standby to document the entire process, including a Toyota GR Corolla camera car. With just 15 minutes of track time allocated to him to set a lap, he made magic happen. On Monday night, he published the full lap to Instagram:
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Other cars are faster, sure, but this has to be one of the most purely joyous laps I’ve seen around Road Atlanta. Manley has no reservations when it comes to curbing, using absolutely every inch of the stuff to squeeze out a 1 minute, 56-second lap time from the Pacifica. The van moves around a lot through the esses at turns two and three, and there’s no shortage of tire squeal. And into turn 10A (after the long straightaway), a huge cloud of smoke emerges from the front rubber under braking. Manley was pushing this thing to the absolute limit. He said he reached 112 mph on the back straight before going to the brakes.
“The reason why you see me chuck it into 10A like that is because I basically don’t know if I’m going to make the corner,” Manley told me. “I wanted to go sideways and make it. It actually worked out pretty good.”
For some context, 1 minute 56 seconds is slow for Road Atlanta. But not that slow. The fastest road cars can easily break under the two-minute barrier, with some Porsches sliding under the 1 minute 40 second mark. Your average Miata with a novice driver will do a high 1 minute, 50-second lap, according to Manley. The lap record, held by a 2003 Ferrari Formula 1 car, stands at 1 minute, 1 second. For a rental van to be within a minute of that time seems like an impressive feat (to me, anyway).
Amazingly, engineers for the Pacifica began reaching out to Manley to tell him about how they tuned the car.
“Multiple Stellannis engineers that worked on the van at the time reached out, and they’re telling me stories about how they tuned it like this… It was kind of cool to get the outreach from people that built the van, [telling me], ‘Hey, we actually put a lot of effort to make sure it could actually perform somewhat decently.'”
So what’s next for Manley’s van antics? Thankfully, it sounds like this timed run won’t be the last.
“There’s talk that we’ll go back and grab an Odyssey and try to see if we’ll go any quicker,” he told me. “I don’t think it would be any quicker, but we’d just want to know, just to see. We might do something at VIR, we haven’t decided yet. It’s kind of a running joke. So we’ll do some more stuff with it.”
Perhaps Manley can get a spec time attack series going after that, maybe something similar to GridLife’s Sundae Cup series, which uses lightly modified Honda Fits. I’ll be among the first to sign up, so long as the best-driving minivan, the Town & Country, is allowed to participate.
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Top photos: Gino Manley on Instagram
Reminds me of Dajiban racing in Japan! We have owned a succession of Chrysler minivans, including a 2002, 2009 and our current, 2020 Pacifica Hybrid, AKA Pepe the Wonder Van. The 2009 had the 3.8/4A setup, and it was pretty decent on a mountain road, especially with 4 wheel disc brakes, but from experience, yes, a brake upgrade is required. Pepe is a hoot to drive, with the lower center of gravity (weight penalty from the battery, though) and regenerative braking. It surprises you with its handling characteristics, almost feeling like it wants you to push just a LITTLE harder around that curve. Put the gear selector in low going down a twisty mountain road, and the regenerative braking becomes aggressive, allowing you to control your speed with one pedal, and recharging the battery all the while. Unfortunately, Pepe is electronically limited to 105 mph…