| 777 | Date: Thursday, 28 Oct 2010, 11.44 | Message # 1 |
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User ID: 777
Joined: 18 Oct 2010
Messages: 1035
| Like many of my generation, I came of automotive age hating the minivan. Just as my parents and their contemporaries detested the station wagon and the vision of compliant domesticity it represented, I saw the minivan as an ugly icon of 1980s-era yuppie parenting -- the final surrender of a man’s individual will and masculinity to the needs of his family. However, the history of the minivan is a bit more complicated than most of us haters might have understood.
The original Dodge Caravan didn’t spring full-formed from the brain of Lee Iacocca in 1983; in fact, the minivan has a rich heritage, one that traces back to the Stout Scarab of the 1930s, an American vehicle with a degree of design innovation matched only by its outrageous-for-the-time price of $5,000. Americans may have invented it, but the Europeans caused it to evolve, with famous incarnations such as the Fiat 600 Multipla in the 1950s and the Volkswagen Type 2 minibus in the '60s.
Nevertheless, the American minivan moment will forever be linked to the Reagan era, when the baby boomers settled into their child-rearing years and practicality trumped any of their previous counterculture sensibilities. When it came to the minivan, I thought my generation would be different; that our lives would be active, adventurous and lived on our own terms. And like many other minivan haters, I drove through much of the 1990s in an SUV -- a Chevrolet Blazer, specifically -- suffering through the same cumbersome road manners and lackluster acceleration that I would have experienced in a minivan, but with the bonuses of higher rollover risk and worse fuel economy. But the poor performance on road was more than made up for by the promise that true independence that would surely be mine if ever I needed to break free of society’s constraints and take it off-road.
But I never did need to take it off-road -- and neither did many of the other minivan-spurners who populated America’s highways and mall parking lots with their sport-utes. What’s worse, as these folks grew older, had families and acquired more stuff, their needs have paralleled those of the minivan and wagon-owning generations before them. Extra seats and more cargo room come in handy, which led to the development of SUVs of truly gargantuan proportions -- all to reach the same level of practicality offered by a minivan. And consider this comparison: A loaded 2-wheel-drive Dodge Grand Caravan SXT -- the modern one, not Iacocca’s original -- weighs 4,483 pounds and has three rows of leather seating, 156 cubic feet of cargo space, power-actuated doors, a dual-screen rear entertainment system and a 4-liter V6 engine that still gets up to 25 mpg on the highway -- and all this can be had for less than $34,000. On the other hand, a similarly equipped 2-wheel-drive Chevrolet Suburban Half-Ton LTZ with a 5.3-liter V8 engine weighs more than 5,700 pounds, gets 21 mpg highway -- and costs almost $55,000.
Now, two of America’s Big Three automakers have abandoned the minivan platform. Ford’s last minivan, the Freestar, ceased production in 2007, and GM stopped making the Chevrolet Uplander in 2009. But Japanese and European automakers have stepped in to fill the void, introducing minivans to nameplates that have never seen them before and keeping up the innovation on existing models. My recent exploration of the breed has shown the modern minivan to be a marvel of creative engineering ideas. And now that I have children of my own, I’ve come around to the minivan in form as well as principle. Sure, it’s a mobile box, but it is also a bold, honest embrace of the joys of family and practicality. Plus, when tricked out, these things are like your living room on wheels, with captain’s chairs, multiscreen entertainment systems with hookups for game systems and iPods, built-in drink coolers and mechanized doors all around.
Does my admiration for the minivan mean I have surrendered my masculinity to the family dynamic? I say no. I’ve procreated, proving that I am a man. It just means my needs have changed. I would like to see one with Hemi, though.
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