“I have never been vain about a car before…” are dangerous words for a celebrity to utter on social media, though I’m going to give full credit to actress Constance Wu for bragging about a vehicle I think absolutely needs to be bragged about: The Minivan. As a Millennial I know that were all lied to. We were told the minivan was square, uncool, a vehicle for moms. The critiques were both gendered and illogical. Minivans rule.
Though I have respect for Wu as an actress (Hustlers, Crazy Rich Asians, and Fresh Off the Boat), I’m fairly sure I didn’t follow her on social media. Instead, I believe the algorithm decided I should see a recent post because it conforms to my longstanding belief that minivans are often superior to SUVs and crossovers for parents.
“I don’t want an SUV, I want something that reflects who I am: And I am mom”
Why We Were Programmed To Not Like Minivans
Every generation is looking to reject the norms of their parents. That’s not necessarily good or bad, it’s just a byproduct of modernity. Often, we shed the irksome habits of our parents, like how your mom might point out the suspected ethnicity and weight of every person in a story they’re retelling. Not all the changes are for the better. Occasionally, we’ll overreach and lose something important, like the three-martini lunch. I think minivans fall into that second category.
This is well-trod territory if you read a lot about cars, though I think it’s worth repeating. If you’re a good person, having a family fundamentally alters the context of your existence. You may still be you after you have a kid, but it’s a you that has an otherwise unfathomable existential weight tugging on you every conscious moment of every day. No matter how much you love your kid or kids, you have to contend with the change in identity that comes with truly putting someone else’s needs first.
For parents in the ’60s and ’70s, this primarily meant buying a station wagon. What I didn’t fully understand before I had a kid is that you need many more seats in your car than the number of children you have. If it takes a village to raise a child, the reality is that occasionally that village will want a ride to go get yogurt. Most old station wagons had a third row of one kind or another, often facing backwards so as to maximize the likelihood that the children back there will either vomit up a Happy Meal, make dirty faces at tailgating motorists, or both.
The wagon became unfashionable by the 1980s and was replaced, seemingly overnight, by a new generation of a vehicle: The Minivan. While there are a few European antecedents, and Ford does deserve its share of credit for laying the groundwork, it’s Chrysler’s Town & Country/Dodge Caravan that correctly gets most of the credit.
There were numerous improvements brought about with the introduction of the modern minivan. Though the vehicle was shorter than comparable station wagons and easier to park, it had way more storage space thanks to its low floor and high roof. Access was improved with a sliding door and liftback rear. Based on a car-like unibody chassis, it was also more efficient and comfortable. What’s remarkable is that, though automakers have tried various alternative configurations, essentially every remaining minivan keeps this basic layout.
While my parents never owned a minivan, nearly every other kid I knew had at least one in the family, so I spent much of my early youth in various Mopar, Ford, Honda, and Toyota vans. There was probably a Nissan Quest in there for good measure.
Then came the Ford Explorer, which changed the desire profile among suburbanites. Somewhat confusingly, minivan sales peaked around the year 2000 with a 7% share of the market. In my memory, the minivan was almost entirely replaced by the SUV by 1995 or 1996. The SUV was a backlash against the minivan, which was itself a response to the station wagon.
There are plenty of good reasons to buy an SUV and, over the years, the modern family SUV has slowly evolved into essentially a big minivan without the sliding doors. Even with all the improvements, it’s difficult not to view the adoption of the SUV as an unfortunate step back towards the limitations of the station wagon without the style.
Millennials Are Bringing Back The Van
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In her Instagram reel (you can click to see it here if it won’t load), Wu is so enthusiastic about her Sienna that she has to clarify that she’s not doing a sponsored promotion for Toyota. She just really loves her van.
Having reviewed almost exactly (if not exactly) the same van in the same configuration, I 100% get it. Here’s what I wrote about the Sienna:
The Sienna wins for being the only minivan offered where every version is a hybrid. It’s hard to argue that a vehicle like a minivan, which is basically a school bus for most families, shouldn’t always be a hybrid. The Sienna also has the option of all-wheel drive, which is important to some people. The starting price is even slightly lower than the Kia, which is the only non-PHEV competitor.
Ultimately, though, a minivan is a place to be. To exist. To pass countless mornings on the way to kindergarten, and endless hours driving to grandma’s 80th birthday party. There’s very little gimmick to the Sienna. Its main gimmick is that it’ll be a comfortable environment for trips long and short, while returning more than reasonable fuel economy. It’ll even do it at a good price.
Personally, my preference is a little more skewed towards the Kia Carnival Hybrid, but there are no bad choices here. As a Millennial child, I remember sleeping un-belted on top of a cooler in the back of my grandfather’s station wagon. That seemed fine at the time, though as a Millennial parent I require both safety equipment and a bunch of other crap to get my kid from place to place. Those little blue barf bags Wu tosses in the back? I definitely drive with one of those for my upchuck-prone child, as well as Dramamine and snacks.
There’s a little do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do hypocrisy here, because I drive a crossover. For various reasons, my wife and I decided to only have one kid, and that meant the minivan was probably overkill (we still considered it, mind you). A hybrid CR-V is plenty large enough for us, and I can squeeze two more kids in the back.
Just to bring this circle, I was reminded of this scene in Fresh Off The Boat in which Wu, as Jessica Huang, mourns the loss of her 1989 Dodge Caravan (with the wood trim, so nice). The show is set in the mid-90s so there’s a lovely sort of bookend here, as the character is old enough to have been around at the tail-end of minivan supremacy, and the actress is now old enough to be here for minivans being cool again.
Top graphic images: Toyota/Instagram
Bring on the PHEV / EREV lifted minivan!
Back in 2007, my company gave us the option of either Ford sedans (Taurus/500 or Fusions I think) or Chrysler Town & Country. Everyone was loathe to sign up for the minivan but I gladly took one since our first child was on the way. I had no prior experience with minivans so I had no bias either way (we did have an 86 Econoline conversion van growing up but it wasn’t a daily driver). I quickly learned that I made the right choice and that stow and go turns those things into better pickup trucks than most pickup trucks. Especially great when you’re not eating the Mopar depreciation on said rigs. When I had the chance, I was able to later purchase the van when it was ready to be turned in for replacement. I think it had about 110k miles at that point and I was able to buy it for $3k. Kept it for 12 years and traded it last year for a loaded 2015 Sienna. As I approach my 50s and the kids leave the nest, I don’t see any reason to not be without a minivan. Instead of hauling kids, now I’m hauling our parents! They really are the swiss army knife of vehicles.
I’d buy a van in a heartbeat if we got a smaller one again. The Sienta or Freed are in production overseas, so we don’t even have to beg Mazda to make the 5 again.
ITS VAN TIME! kids, dogs, firewood, the roller derby team, the van does it all!
Real late to this but yeah, vans rule. A lot of other dads my age have also gone this way. At least for the people I’m around, we simply don’t have delusions regarding our station in life. I’m a dad. There is no car that is going to make me look cool. I chose the vehicle that made most sense for my life.
As empty nesters, we kept buying minivans because they absolutely rule as camping/road trip vehicles. And when my husband fell ill, the van was easy for him to get in and out of, and on occasion a wheelchair went in the back.
We had a 2006 Explorer for a while, but you just don’t get much interior space given the size of the vehicle
Something that doesn’t come up too much is that minivans have been full-size-ish vehicles for 20ish years now.
My last gen Sorento and first gen Sienna were just about the same size – of course folding-only seats, AWD ate a third of the interior volume from the former but I enjoyed the size of it a lot. Granted, not the biggest deal because folks still bought the Sienna after it grew-to-match.
Now minivans are less than two inches in width removed from F-150’s and similar.
I’m generally kinder since a lot of barely-three-row crossover options are smaller than minivans but I also recognize hits like the Pilot are the same width anyway.
I helped a friend car shop a bit on a shoestring budget and she would just ignore my minivan suggestions (because costs less and three young kids) and went with an… okay Pilot – final straw was her getting way onto the “crunchy” train but that’s beyond this site.