1,000 Miles In a Chrysler Pacifica Taught Me Minivan Supremacy

Seven hundred miles into my 1,000-mile weekend journey, I discovered myself caught within the wasteland of rural Pennsylvania. I used to be sitting at a lifeless cease in building visitors on I-80 — bored, completed, sick of being in a automobile and able to be again house in New York. I noticed a BMW X6 M within the oncoming lane, and a shocking thought entered my head: “God, I’m glad I’m in this and never that.”

It’s not a psychological comparability I anticipated to make, between a top-tier BMW efficiency crossover and a Chrysler minivan with low cost plastic trim. However what? I stand by it. When you’re taking a Nice American Street Journey, do it in a minivan.

Full Disclosure: Chrysler loaned me a top-trim Pacifica Hybrid for a weekend, and was gracious sufficient to let me add 4 digits to the odometer. I returned the favor by giving the automobile again with roughly a million bugs caked onto the windshield, as a result of each automobile wash I visited on the return journey was closed. I promise I attempted.

This previous weekend, a school buddy bought married out in Ohio. I promised I’d attend, however in our world of flight delays and cancellations I feared I’d by no means make it by airplane. So, I hatched a plan: A street journey, from New York Metropolis to Sandusky and again. Eighteen hours in a automobile over two days, with the marriage ceremony in between.

Now, I knew what I used to be taking up. My mother and father are, basically, snowbirds — making journeys from Connecticut to Florida and again on the common, spending days within the automobile in order to not pressure their monumental, anxious canine onto a airplane. I’ve ridden alongside on a few these drives, which complete about the identical size as my little weekend jaunt. I knew it wouldn’t be probably the most enjoyable journey on the planet, however it could definitely be doable.

I had my plan. I had my playlists. I simply wanted a car.

Initially, I thought of one thing flashy. Take a web page out of Andy’s book, get one thing massive and ostentatious to stunt on everybody else at a midwest marriage ceremony. As an alternative, I let my curiosity get one of the best of me — I’d spent days in crossovers, however had solely missed out on the present crop of minivans. Truthfully, I don’t assume I’d ever even ridden shotgun in a single.

See, I keep in mind minivans from my elementary and middle-school carpool days. I keep in mind a bright-blue Sienna, its taillight repaired with packing tape after a run-in with a rubbish can, its tan fabric inside encrusted with Goldfish mud. I keep in mind the little field of Goosebumps books and Fruit-by-the-Foot that all the time sat between the second-row seats, able to make the trip house a bit much less boring.

May a minivan make a greater road-trip chariot than the ever present crossover? Had been we mistaken to desert these lengthy our bodies and powered sliding doorways?

There was just one option to discover out. I picked up the minivan from its Manhattan storage, plugged my low cost motel into the navigation, and compelled my method by means of the hellish merge into the Lincoln Tunnel. With New Jersey drivers seemingly aiming for me, trying PIT maneuvers of their efforts to skip one spot forward in line, I had second ideas. Why had I picked such a protracted car for simply me and my backpack? Was this additional area, solely ineffective to me as the motive force, price it?

The lengthy freeway from New Jersey to Ohio gave me some indication. The Pacifica’s lengthy wheelbase made for a easy trip, nearly gliding over the pockmarked interstate asphalt. It was quiet, too — easy aerodynamics meant I by no means heard the whipping wind noises you’d count on from 70-mile-an-hour velocity limits. On telephone calls, individuals requested me why I’d stopped. They assumed, from the silence within the cabin, that I’d pulled over to talk.

All that area practically got here in useful on my first evening in Ohio. My buddy’s marriage ceremony invitation had helpfully listed quite a lot of good native motels. I, an fool, as a substitute determined to remain within the Rosebud Motel of Schitt’s Creek fame. Not less than that’s the way it felt, coming into my room to seek out peeling wallpaper and buzzing mosquitoes. My buddies had related ideas upon seeing a video walkthrough:

I did in truth tear up and doing coverings, and I did test the mattress, and I didn’t discover proof of bedbugs. However, regardless of my mistake in motel selection, there was all the time a reassuring various: The van was proper there. If want be, I might all the time fold down these rear seats and settle in for the evening.

After discovering a cockroach within the room the subsequent day, and handing over my key with out a refund for the subsequent evening’s reservation, sleeping within the van grew to become a way more actual risk. It additionally meant I’d spend the morning of the marriage within the Chrysler, sitting in parking heaps outdoors varied Starbucks shops and pancake eating places. Something was higher than roaches.

In order that Saturday, I spent hours simply sitting within the automobile. Stress-free within the driver’s seat, the second row, the third row. In every row, the seats had been plush sufficient to lounge in consolation; in every, there was room for my six-foot-tall body to comfortably stretch out. Minivans had been roomy once I was a child, and so they’ve solely gotten roomier as I’ve grown up.

All that area that prompted such bother for me in Manhattan grew to become a luxurious, a welcome respite from the grunge and dirt of the motel. The Pacifica had leather-based, a pleasant stereo; it was my very own area that by no means felt confined or limiting. I managed the cleanliness. I even did job of it, largely.

The Pacifica can afford to be roomy in a method most crossovers can’t. A crossover’s lengthy hood and truncated tail encroach on the cabin, consuming away at area, pushing seats ever nearer collectively within the title of favor. Look no additional than the coupe-crossover to see it in its worst kind.

Most vans lack that pretentiousness. They’re by no means performing like one thing they aren’t. After all they’re massive; after all they aren’t notably fashionable. That’s the purpose. A very good van is unapologetically itself, by no means pretending to be sporty or smooth. Minivans know themselves, know their function, and understand how finest to serve that trigger.

One marriage ceremony and one evening in a much-less-sketchy resort later, I used to be homeward certain. The journey again was lengthy, with dead-stop visitors the one notable incidence. After all the drive was boring — a van as competent as this one, as put-together and purpose-built, by no means attracts consideration to itself with flaws or foibles. Lengthy distances are boring as a result of they’re straightforward, enabled by the mile-eating prowess of god’s good street journey car.

I speak usually about how EVs are the future of cars. That all the time garners responses about hundred-mile commutes and thousand-mile street journeys. If that’s you, then nice: Right here’s your subsequent car. The Pacifica Hybrid, and the minivan as a complete, is the right selection on your subsequent household street journey. Study to cease worrying and love the van.