The CAFE business in a word legislated the wagons out .
Total Bull. The reason big wagons went by-by were MiniVans. Want to blame someone blame Chryco. They invented the minivan…And sales took off. Then Wagon sales dropped drastically.
“The reason big wagons went by-by were MiniVans. Want to blame someone blame Chryco. They invented the minivan…”
I worked a large Volkswagen dealer several years before Chrysler’s minivans hit the scene. I can still remember them sending people over to our dealer and special ordering and purchasing all the parts to attach the sliding door. Cost was not a concern.
Volkswagen pioneered that design and had sliding doors on the 68 VW bus. The 67 bus had hinged doors. I believe Chrysler’s design was very much like Volkswagen’s and very similar to what has been used by other manufacturers to present.
By the way, you would have to pry my Dodge Caravan from my cold, dead fingers. It has been a fantastic vehicle to own and drive. My insurance company has bee friendly with it, too. Insurance is very reasonable.
CSA
@“common sense answer” We had a Dodge Grand Caravan for a week that the insurance company rented for us while a dent was being removed from our Sienna. The insurance company of the person that ran into me insisted on having mine fixed right away even though the damage was only cosmetic . Since I needed a minivan to transport my musical colleagues and their instruments to two different concerts, I was provided with a minivan. When I went to Enterprise to get the minivan, they asked if the Dodge Grand Caravan would be o.k. I said that I would prefer the Duke Ellington Caravan, but was told that the last one had been rented to a,Sophisticated Lady, so it was the Dodge Grand Caravan or nothing. I did like the Dodge minivan and I could live with one. I had never considered.buying one because I have never been able to work with the sales department at our local Chrysler dealer. I still don’t understand why Toyota, Honda, Kia, and Chrysler think it is profitable to make minivans while GM and Ford dropped them. The Ford Transit Connect seems more like a commercial vehicle to me. Also, I’ve noticed in larger cities that minicans are used for taxicab service. Maybe some company will see fit to make a minivan as rugged as,the old Checker.
Although the “minivan” was invented by Volkswagen in the 50s, Lee Iacocca when president of Chrysler made it popular by reskinning a K car and creating the famous people hauler. The rest is history. Suddenly you got more space in a frugal 4 cylinder vehicle than was traditional in a large V8 powered gas guzzler.
In 1961, Chevrolet came out with a Corvair van that was about minivan size. Ford came out with its Econoline which was much smaller than later Econoline vans. I think both were inspired by the VW microbuses.
The VW bug was the first Mini-Van…but it really wasn’t a good replacement for a big hauler like a large station-wagon. The Caravan with the optional V6 engines were extremely capable of replacing the gas guzzling wagons. Put 20 sheets of plywood of the VW bug and climb a steep hill you may be doing wheely’s…IF it can even climb the hill. The air-cooled VW engine was pretty anemic compared to Chryco’s V6 engines.
The only disadvantage to the Chrysler minivan over the full sized station wagons it replaced was that the Chrysler minivans couldn’t tow a trailer as well a full sized wagons with the rear wheel drive and full frame. The minivans that would be the best for my purposes were the Ford Aerostar and Chevrolet Astro. These were rear wheel drive minivans,with body on frame construction. The criticism by Consumer Reports that these minivans were “truck like” was exactly what made them desirable to me. I really liked the Ford Aerostar I owned. I wish Ford hadn’t gotten away from that design.
@Triedaq The role of towing has shifted to the pickup trucks and SUVs. Over half the residents on my street have pickup trucks and they all have trailer hitches. Those that don’t actually tow, use them for bicycle carriers or as business vehicles. One guy down the street towed a small camper with his Honda minivan until the transmission gave out.
He now uses a rear drive SUV.
The Crown Victoria (Ford panther chassis) and the rear drive Caprice/Impala wee the last cars to have serious trailer towing capability.
@Docnick I am probably showing my age. I grew up in a,working class neighborhood in the country in the late 1940s through the 1950s. Very few families had more than one vehicle. My parents didn’t get a,second vehicle until my mother went back to work in the mid 1950s. Everyone in the neighborhood had a trailer hitch on their car and a utility trailer. One retired neighbor would buy a house trailer in the summertime, fix it up and tow it from East Central Indiana to Florida in the late fall. He and his wife would live in the trailer until spring. He would sell the trailer in Florida for a profit and repeat the process the next year after he returned to Indiana in the spring. He towed the house trailers to Florida with his 1947 Pontiac and later with his,1951 Buick Roadmaster. Both cars had an axle hitch. I remember one neighbor in the late 1940s had a Model A Ford. He built his own house starting with the basement. The family lived in the basement while he completed the upper part of the house. He hauled the building materials in a trailer he pulled with the Model A Ford. If a car couldn’t pull a trailer back then, it would have been useless. We didn’t have the luxury of more than one vehicle. This lack of trailer towing ability is what disappoints me about today’s minivans. I thought about an E-150 Ford van, but it is too large for everyday driving with one or two people. I would like to be able to pull a trailer with a minivan with musical instruments when our chamber orchestra gives a concert away from our home base. Our 4Runner has the capability to pull the trailer, but it doesn’t have the seating capacity of the Sienna. Hence, I make two trips. I make one trip to haul the large instruments and another to transport the musicians.
@Triedaq Thanks for the comments! I grew up in a large farm family and we had 2 cars, a 1940 Plymouth and a 1941 Chevrolet. We also had a Chevy pickup truck.
When I got married we were a single car family from 1967 to 1972. I have pulled campers a with a 1965 Dodge Dart V8, a 1966 Malibu V8, a 1971 Mercury Comet 6, a 1976 Granada V8, a 1984 Chevy Impala V8 and a 1988 Caprice V8. The Comet was not a good tow vehicle and I had some transmission repairs.
I would not dream of towing anything with my Toyota Corolla or Mazda3.
I try to stay with one vehicle and honestly ,its hard to find a real good comprimise .
Lee Iaccoca claimed that he tried to sell Ford on the mini van concept before moving to Chyrsler ,as usual upper management wouldnt listen and Chrysler scooped the market (but truthfully,these have been some of the most trouble prone vehicles around here in my estimation,for that reason I wouldnt own one,I guess a person should be very careful on maintenence on these things(the Ford V6S were horrible too,everyone of them you seen for sale or setting had the same problems) It seems the Astros were good 200k vehicles(I repeat ,I am not a GM man,I call em as I see em
Exactly, Joe Mario. I was forced to return my 2002 Sienna to the USA when I got my permanent residence documents. I bought a 2009 Sienna in our state capitol. It is an 8 passenger vehicle which is really neat here in Mexico.
In the USA, most neighborhoods have more vehicles available than they need. Here in Mexico, one crowds in so neighbors don’t have to walk long distances. The most we ever had in our 2002 was 11 people coming home from church in the next village. The 8 passenger 2009 is really nice.
I really chortle when someone comes on Car Talk, with needs taken right out of Chrysler’s original mini-van design specifications. Then, adds, but I don’t want a mini-van… I agree it seems to be a desire not to grow up.