Idaho by minivan

I have a lot of automotive takes. Some are legitimate and backed by data or hard numbers, others are purely based on my own biased opinion. But one automotive take I’ll argue to the grave is that minivans are undoubtedly the best vehicles money can buy. 

Maximum passenger space, an unfathomably large amount of room to haul things, a comfortable ride regardless of distance, clever amenities and features, and when you blend all that together, you get a package that’s shockingly affordable. They’re the best for families too, and unless you’re towing an imposter of a yacht, the reality is 90% of American families would be better off in a minivan with sliding doors, rather than an expensive, obnoxious gas-guzzling, truck-based three-row SUV. I often shake my head in disbelief when I see Chevrolet Suburbans, Escalades, Mercedes-Benz GLS-Classes, or Ford Expeditions being piloted with one mom behind the wheel and a middle schooler riding up front.  

Growing up in the 1990s and 2000s with two parents deeply engrained in corporate America, we had a minivan. So did literally every family in our neighborhood. The second-gen Dodge Grand Caravan and Chrysler Town & Country was like the official vehicle of Milwaukee’s north shore suburbs. My parents in 1995 rolled the dice and bought a Ford Windstar. It was green and tan, equipped with cloth bench seats and so much hilariously cheap plastic inside. My two younger brothers and I each commandeered a corner of the Windstar’s cabin, and on longer road trips to the Wisconsin Dells, my mom would jerry-rig a portable tube TV with a VHS, strap it down either between the two front seats’ armrests or on the folded-down middle row, and entangle herself in power adaptors and long headphone cords for us three  juvenile boys. Somehow, it worked! Gosh were those the days.

 

Then the Windstar got replaced by a brand-new 2006 Honda Odyssey Touring which was loaded. Black heated leather seats, automatic climate control, a sunroof, two (!) power-sliding doors, captain’s chairs, and a lazy susan storage well below the floor. I remember going with my dad to the Honda dealership after my freshman year of high school to bring it home. It survived nearly 20 years of severe abuse, dents, rust, bumpers held on by scotch tape, spills, leaking power steering fluid, and exploding soda cans. All of us used it to move in and out of college dorm rooms, my first house, out of our childhood home of more than three decades. It was an absolute tank of a vehicle. Again, like the Windstar, the Odyssey was a creator of everlasting memories. 

Recently, two friends and I spent a long weekend in Idaho skiing amidst the snowy peaks in the stunning Payette National Forest. Upon landing in Boise, I specifically  booked us a 2018 Honda Odyssey off of Turo for a price far below any antiquated rental car company would charge. Admittedly, I was so damn excited to spend four days and hundreds of miles with a minivan…because I knew it was going to be perfect for our needs. We folded down the seats, threw all of our luggage and skiing or snowboarding gear on the flat floor, and each had a spacious throne to sit in for the hours and hours of driving we’d do.  The Odyssey we borrowed, who’s name reportedly was “Dave” per its owner, was a stripper (bare-bone base trim with no fancy bells and whistles), with hubcaps, black plastic mirrors and door handles, and manual-sliding doors. 

With, if I recall correctly, 118,000 miles on its odometer, Dave, did have its flaws. Tapping the brakes caused the steering wheel to dance, one of the manual-sliding doors required a muscular final push to fully open, and its headlights were, well, dangerously dim at night. But Dave almost immediately proved to be such an ideal companion for a guy’s ski trip. It was fuel efficient, slowly sipping gas, goblled up all our stuff, and just so easy to drive. Its low bumper meant too that taking on and off our rigid ski and snowboard boots right at the base of Brundage Mountain, was a lazily easy task.

I was thrilled one of my friends, a dad of two kiddos and owner of two Subarus considering buying a minivan, was sold after a few hundred miles traversing Idaho. You're welcome, Honda.

Today's minivan segment is quite different than what it was ten, twenty, even thirty years ago. Rewind to the 1990s and 2000s and it was an era of sliding-door madness. GM had a trio of its own: the Chevrolet Venture, Pontiac Montana, and Oldsmobile Silhouette, Nissan had a Quest, there was a Ford Windstar and Mercury Villager, there was the Toyota Sienna and Honda Odyssey, Chrysler's Town & Country and Voyager, the Dodge Caravan, even Mazda bid for family buyers with its MPV. Least we forget, the Volkswagen Eurovan, Kia Sedona, and probably one or two others I'm blanking on. That aforementioned list tallies at least a dozen. Five months into the 2026 model year, and we're down to just four: the Sienna, Kia's Carnival, the Odyssey, and Chrysler's Pacifica. A wild sign of the times and reflection that consumer tastes have gravitated toward burlier crossovers, SUVs, and pickup trucks.

But minivans are seeing somewhat of a comeback tour...which rules! Peeping the numbers, minivan sales in the U.S. are up nearly 20% year-over-year. Kia sold 71,917 units of its Carnival in 2025, up from 49,276, Chrysler's Pacifica and budget-friendly Voyager accounted for a 5.5% increase, while the Honda Odyssey's sales last year grew 10.5%. Toyota took the crown, selling almost 102,000 units of its Sienna in 2025, up a whopping 35.2%. Furthermore, according to automakers, the typical minivan buyer is getting younger and increasingly male. That data doesn't surprise me, given every one of my Millennial friends who have acquired a minivan in recent years for their families love it and have zero regrets.

Hopefully, more consumers will continue to wake up and smell the coffee, and realize how rad of an all-around, multi-purpose companion the minivan can be.

~Robby

➡️ What I'm listening to: "Pacifics" by Digable Planets
➡️ What I'm drinking: McCall Brewing Company's Mackinaw Red 
➡️ An auction I'm watching: https://carsandbids.com/auctions/3q10koNA/2001-audi-tt-quattro-roadster
➡️ A story you should read: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/04/self-driving-car-technology-tesla-crash/686054/
📰 Where I'm quoted: I attended Lucid's Investor Day event in New York City and spoke with Automotive News about the startup's next plan of attack.