What’s Wrong With Minivans?

S

We tend to pile hate onto minivans, but now that crossovers have outpaced them as the Most Unadventurous Vehicles On The Road, maybe it’s time for a reappraisal.

We criticized the Plymouth Prowler for having a minivan engine today on our mismatched car/engine pairings post. It turns out that the Prowler’s SOHC V6 didn’t go into a minivan until 2008, and that was in a significantly evolved form.

Still, Zekestone stood up for the Prowler’s motor, and for minivans as a whole.

What's with the implied minivan hate?

I think any Prowler equipped with the current Chrysler Pentastar minivan engine (283HP) would be pretty awesome. And the previous 4.0L 24V V6 used in the Chrysler van (good for 251HP) wasn't bad either. I would take either of these engines over a "real" hot rod V8 engine with an old OHV design and gas guzzling tendencies.

And when you look at the engines in the Honda, Toyota and Nissan minivans, those are damn good engines and are basically the same engines used in cars and even some trucks. Even the 2.3L MZR engine in the Mazda 5 is good. That engine has been put in many products. Why should it be a "good" engine when put in a Ranger or Mazda3, but bad just because it's used in a van?

And some people love the old GM/Chevy 4.3L V6, some love the GM/Buick 3.8L V6, some love the Mitsubishi Astron engine and some people love the old Chrysler-designed K-based turbo four cylinder engines. All of those were minivan engines at one point or another. Minivans are great.

They're practical, they're affordable and I had some of the best sex ever in my life in a minivan.

You see many people who have minivans with kids.

That's because people with minivans get laid... which eventually results in having kids (or having more kids).

I, for one, love vehicles with, uh, plenty of fold-down space in the back, but I’ve always been more of a wagon man than anything else. What do you think? We know that old ones are great hoonmobiles, but should we go easy on this tall-boy baby wagons?

Photo Credit: Frank the Tank

via Jalopnik http://jalopnik.com/151109646