Home / Auto News / News article: Top 10 Reasons to Buy a Minivan - AutoGuide.com News
 |  Feb 22, 3:02 PM

3. Safety

Minivans are equipped with many of the most progressive safety features of any vehicles. Airbags can seemingly pop out of every surface, protecting passengers in the case of a crash. Plus many vans come with options like backup cameras, blind-spot assist and sonar based parking assist. Additionally, unlike SUVs, Minivans have a lower center of gravity making them less likely to roll-over.


  • alexpurty

    a biiiiiiiiiiigggggggggggggggg space

  • Keesvanoers

    Not available in Holland!!! Missed opportunity

  • JheChe

    not available too in indonesia!! DAMN!! wish it will be here.. MUST BE BOOMING!! >_______<"

  • tteer5545566656666666

    90 percent of the time you dont use the space, and it a pain to put up the third row if a 5th person comes
    u do realize that every car isnt availble every where cause it might not see well= loss of profit
    if u think about it every car is a risk(warrentys,loss of$$$$$$) usally car compinies sell a new model to one country so if it flops it isnt a bigger drop in stock price

  • ABooth

    One touch convenience: Funny how my mother and grandmothers did just fine with conventionally swinging doors. Perhaps they just had the presence of mind to carry their key with them on the way to the car door and stooping for a moment to open it wasn’t beneath them.

    Fridge: The cooler only works if the A/C is on, and because it’s using air sent to the rear seats to cool your drinks, that means tossing a warm Coke in there too cool it down means you’re warming up the air sent to rear passengers. Neat idea, bad execution.

    Seat versatility: The biggest automotive lie going. The third rows are really quite narrow, suitable for three little kids without car seats, but with car seats, realistically only two (and only one set of LATCH anchors back there!). Second row captains chairs are nice if you’re obese, but a waste of space if you need to put kids in car seats. The middle seat in the middle row of 8-passenger vans (Odyssey, Sienna) is a farce: you need a butt 13 in wide to fit into the Sienna’s, but to their credit the Odyssey will fit three car seats or (very little) butts across.

    Doubles as a work truck: Do you remember the 1979 Volkswagen Rabbit pickup? Most people don’t, and that’s because it was a highly unsuccessful attempt to make a front-wheel drive truck based on the VW Group A1 platform. Because the weight was placed on the rear wheels and the engine drove the front wheels, it never did well as a truck and VW stopped insulting our intelligence with them after three years. Same deal with minivans, which are all front-wheel drive. Because you want the trucked weight on the driven wheels, minivans are especially poorly suited of the task of lugging around cargo.

    Rear seat entertainment: One word: iPad. Your kids will like you better if you give them one of these rather than trying to pacify them with some lame, overpriced entertainment system in the back. If you don’t believe, just ask them.

    Car seats: So, yes, the Odyssey will hold three car seats across the second row of the 8-passenger van, but the third row is still too narrow for three car seats of any combination. Most other vans will hold only four car seats total.

    Low insurance rates: Flatly untrue. Premium pricing is determined much more greatly by the driver and your location than the vehicle you drive and when controlling for the driver and geography, the IIHS (the insurance industry’s independent safety research council) will tell you minivans have the highest loss frequency of any family car type, which increase their premiums over station wagons and SUVs.

    Safety: A good crash test rating is a sine qua non for most family cars and most family oriented vehicles manage to achieve this. As noted above, minivans have the highest loss frequency of family car styles and, although they perform well in crashes, it stands to reason its better still not to be involved in one in the first place.

    Cargo room: With the third row raised, minivan’s cargo spaces are wide and tall ,but shallow. Good for carrying golf bags vertically, but less useful for groceries, where you must be careful to place eggs, bread, and fruit on top. Lowering the third row opens up a cavernous space, but it’s not where you want to put heavy things (see ‘doubles as a work truck’ above) and isn’t as god as a 4-door truck. Should you lower only half of the third tow, then you invite cargo into the passenger area here it becomes a projectile in a crash (force = mass * acceleration). If you’re concerned about safety (see ‘safety’ above) you’re not going to do this.

    Sliding doors: Survival of the fittest means that if your kids are dumb enough to get out of their car seats and jam their hands in the door maybe they deserve to suffer a little with a boo-boo on their fingers and learn their lessons the hard way. Or they could just be smart and stay in their car seats and well out of reach of the doors. If your kid is too big for a car seat and doesn’t know enough to keep his hands free and clear of the doors then he’s just plain stupid. ‘Nuff said.