I tried to remain hip long enough. And now I’m ready to admit it: the other day when I rented a van for a few hours to move some furniture out of storage, I really liked the extra space. Personal brand be damned; my family and I need to get around town comfortably.

So when the Prius dies a family car it shall be. But what kind -- a minivan or a mid-sized SUV? Why not home in on the bestsellers -- the Chrysler Town & Country and the Ford Explorer?

Being the insurance dork that I am, I also need to know which is cheaper to cover.

Good thing CoverHound proprietary data was here to provide me with an answer.

And the answer is that the Chrysler Town & Country is 12.97% less expensive to insure than the Ford Explorer, all other factors equal.

The Explorer was more expensive to cover in every single state and every carrier for which our platform ran a test, with the one exception of Progressive in Arizona, where the Town & Country was a dollar more per month.

Obviously this is just a snapshot of a vehicle in each genre, but a trend can be extrapolated here. Minivans are generally cheaper to insure than SUVs -- mainly because they are driven almost exclusively by families.

Families, per capita, are less expensive to insure because they often drive more safely than does the rest of the population. Kids in the backseat will do that to you.

For this same, family-centric reason minivans aren’t driven as much -- generally used to take kids to and from school and on family trips on the weekend. These miles add up but not nearly as quickly as commutes to work.

SUVs are also intrinsically cooler than are minivans; for this reason they also more attractive to thieves.

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