6 Comments:

a good and practical move. I think you'll find that all the minivans have more cargo space and get better gas mileage than any SUV. The honda odyssey is by far the most popular of all the minivans, and I know this just by driving through the preschool parking lot. We have a Mazda MPV for the cost and gas factor. It was also the first to have the seats that fold in to the floor - of course now they all have that. The best one we researched was the Nissan Quest it was the most roomy, versitile and the coolest looking, but it was a bit out of our price range at the time. Of course Dad would put in his 2 cents for the GM ones, but at the time the Chevy Venture had a design problem. The battery under the hood was completely inaccessable - so if you needed a jump, there was no way to reach the battery! Just about all the companies will offer a DVD player as an incentive, but don't get suckered in, you can buy your own DVD player when you need one. Consider a built in DVD player as "just one more thing to break" as most all of them are not very good quality. Happy hunting!

By  Candy, at 10:51 AM  

I think I'd better forward Candy's comments to our Sales & Marketing group :)

Dad

PS. I accept that my children can make independent decisions not to support my employer, and thus contribute to my pension plan... just remember to keep an extra room in your house as part of my alternate retirement plan ;)

By  Anonymous, at 12:45 PM  

Dad, you can always count on us for our Chevy Malibu purchases. We are on our second one and it is just an awesome car. I look for excuses to drive it. :) But, our guest room is always ready too. hehe.

I'm guessing the battery access problem would have been fixed by now. This was like 1999 that we shopped for minivans. It was definitly the only turnoff. When we asked the sales guy "how are you supposed to jump it?" he said "well, you call the roadside assistance to do it for you"
Hmmm ;-/

By  Candy, at 2:52 PM  

Ooooh, a new van. We did our shopping last year and liked the Toyota Sienna (model year 2004) better than the Odyssey for the features it offered. Of course, to get comparable features in the Toyota, you will pay more.

I have lots of friends with Odysseys and they all love them. It all depends on what you need your van for. We love the fact that we can get a whole sheet of plywood in the back of our van. I don't know if Honda's new Oydssey will be able to accomodate a whole sheet of plywood or not.

And there are definitely days I wish I had a smaller van (like when I'm trying to park the behemoth in a tight space).

Joni

By  Anonymous, at 3:42 PM  

We looked at everything and ended up getting the Toyota Sienna. The 2004 model just have every little detail gone over with a fine tooth comb and the entire thing is a work of art. Most impressive of course was highway milage on a trip we took where I got 32mpg. That's better than I get in my little coup on the same vegas run. And of course I expect this thing to last forever.

By  Derek, at 12:35 AM  

Just about all the companies will offer a DVD player as an incentive, but don't get suckered in, you can buy your own DVD player when you need one. |

ha! we found ourselves having a difficult time not being suckered into the dvd option, even though the rationalist in us said it wasn't very sensible. i think we can stay strong and not succumb to the marketing ploys :-)

i'm not saying we've ruled out any GM models just yet, so stay tuned. you never know. maybe pigs will fly :-)

interesting comments on the sienna. it's on our list to test drive. i didn't know it got such "good" gas mileage ( all things considered ). it's going to be hard to let go of the 50 m.p.g. we get with the tdi jetta wagon.

By  e3, at 10:18 PM  

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