The Best Minivans for 2015

I’m Steven Kaye, Editorial Director at Bottom Line Publications, and today my guest is auto analyst Karl Brauer, Kelley Blue Book Senior Director. Some people think minivans are the most useful vehicles on the planet, and people who have them tend to love them. But can you actually have fun, and even have some style, in a minivan? Bottom Line is here to show you how.

Karl, thank you for coming.

Karl Brauer: Hey, great to be here.

Bottom Line: Let’s talk minivans.

Brauer: Yeah, let’s get excited. Let’s talk minivans.

Bottom Line: All right, minivans used to be among the most popular vehicles. They were tearing up the sales charts. They were all over the place. And then something happened called the SUV, and we all know what happened to the minivan. They’re still out there, and many people do actually love their minivans.

Brauer: They’ve got quite a following, and I continue to think that in terms of moving humans around in the most efficient way and effective and comfortable way, anytime you can put a box on wheels, you’re going to have the most interior space available. There’s just no getting around the basic physics of the situation.

So when you have a minivan that’s got lots of nice options in it and it’s quiet and it’s easy to get in and out of because of the big sliding doors, there’s just no better way to move humans.

Bottom Line: And you fold the seats down if you don’t need to move humans, and you’ve got a cargo van.

Brauer: You’ve got cargo capability, too. Flexibility on the vehicle is unmatched, really.

Bottom Line: And yet the market has diminished. I think Ford stopped making and selling minivans.

Brauer: General Motors too.

Bottom Line: General Motors too, they stopped making minivans. But there are still some nice ones out there, and you’ve got a couple that you like in particular for the 2015 model year.

Brauer: Yeah, the market’s gotten pretty narrow, so it’s not that hard to choose a minivan because there’s not that many you’ve got to wade through. But the stalwarts that have held out really have been Honda, Toyota, Chrysler, and Kia, believe it or not.

I think Honda really redefined the minivan as something that can actually be fun to drive when they redesigned the Odyssey in ’99, and they’ve pretty much owned that category since in terms of “I need all the functionality of a family vehicle, and I’d like whatever fun I can have left after I’ve maintained that requirement.”

And the Odyssey has always been the best at that. It’s just very good in terms of steering feel and suspension dampening. You can drive that car more aggressively than you should ever drive a minivan, and it’ll put up with it and actually kind of encourage it. So I really am a fan of the Odyssey.

Bottom Line: You mentioned the physics of the minivan being a box, which is a benefit because it gives you lots of cargo area and lots of people space. But the physics is also what makes it challenging in terms of being fun to drive. It has a high center of gravity; it’s not going to take curves like a car would.

But you’re saying Honda has, in a sense, figured out how to shave off some of that. Does it drive like a car? Does it drive like an SUV? Does it drive just like a minivan, but a little better?

Brauer: It drives like an extremely well-handling and engaging van. Just because of the physics and how you sit in the car and where the wheel is to you and all, you never forget you’re in a van. But you also kind of can’t believe you’re in a van when you start going around corners aggressively and it behaves so well.

Bottom Line: I’m interested in knowing why you’ve chosen the Honda over the other minivan that sells about the same number, which is the Toyota Sienna – again, a long-time entrant in minivans. What is it about the Honda that makes you like it over the Toyota?

Brauer: It’s a very tough choice, because the Sienna is another great minivan. It’s super refined, it’s all those Toyota qualities – it’s quiet; I think it’s probably got a slight road noise advantage over the Odyssey, and some would argue it might have a slight ride quality advantage because it’s very smooth, like Toyotas typically are.

I’m not a huge fan of the styling on the Sienna. It just doesn’t feel like they tried to avoid the minivan-ness of the car as well as Honda did, which just feels a little more interesting to me. And then again, it’s the driving dynamics. I feel like you’re giving up 5%, 8% of ride quality and maybe noise, but you’re gaining 15%, 20% in driving dynamics when you go from Sienna to Honda Odyssey. So you’re ahead of the game a little more on the Odyssey.

But if you really didn’t care about driving at all and you really, really cared about quiet and ride comfort, the Sienna would arguably be the better one.

Bottom Line: So the benefit of the Honda in terms of driving, what we’re talking about is just a more planted feeling, a little bit less wobbly, a little more –

Brauer: Confident, fun.

Bottom Line: Secure handling.

Brauer: And it’s still got all these great features, like the Lazy Susan storage thing, where you actually have that rotating area that has a lot of space to store things in. And now, of course, you’ve got some of the things that some people considered a marketing gimmick, but it certainly worked, which was the HondaVAC with its built-in…

Bottom Line: The built-in vacuum.

Brauer: Yeah, you can get rid of all those Cheerios and stuff. So it’s a really good combination of styling, driving dynamics, and very family-friendly features.

Bottom Line: Okay. There’s another minivan that’s coming back onto the market this year that you like a lot, and that is the Kia Sedona.

Brauer: This one surprised me, because it was at the auto show, and I went to get in it feeling as much out of obligation than out of true enthusiasm for the vehicle, and I quickly shifted to enthusiasm once I got in the vehicle and saw – really, it’s really amazing.

I mean, I give Kia credit, because they know that the interior is where you’re going to spend all the time in any car, but it’s like the whole purpose of a minivan. It’s to carry humans around in a nice environment. I was really happily surprised by the quality of the vinyl on the seats and just the interior styling and ambience in general. They really cranked it up.

I give Kia credit, because you’ve got these stalwarts, Chrysler, Honda, and Toyota – I mean, they basically own that category. Anyone who’s a fan of one of those three probably doesn’t even consider the other two at all. So to make any ground in that segment is tough, and to convert people is tough. I think Kia is doing everything they possibly can, everything humanly and corporately possible, to convert people to their van.

And if you just give it a chance and you get inside it, you might find yourself, as a Chrysler, Honda, or Toyota fan, thinking “This might be the best one for me.”

Bottom Line: And does Kia throw their famous extra-long warranty onto this van as well?

Brauer: Yep. It’s got that 10 year, 100,000 mile warranty on just the drivetrain and additional warranty coverage on the rest of the car that lasts as long or longer than anyone else. So you’ve got great coverage.

And then of course, there’s the other Kia commonality across their model line – value. If you price out the Sedona, in spite of what feels like an extremely upscale and luxurious interior, it prices out typically less than the competition.

Bottom Line: I want to ask you about one other – I’ve heard – it actually is shocking that this hasn’t come onto the market yet, but I’ve heard that Chrysler is working on a hybrid minivan. If there’s any place where you need better gas mileage, it’s in a minivan. I don’t know why we don’t have one on the market now, but I’m wondering what you think of this possibility. If Chrysler comes out with a hybrid version, are they going to steal the show?

Brauer: Well, if there’s anywhere that Chrysler could use some help reestablishing itself as the market leader, it’s in the minivan. They invented the category and they owned it, not just by majority, but by overwhelming majority, for a long time. But Honda and Toyota have been eating away at that dominance there.

Of course, now we hear rumors that the Dodge brand is going to become more of a performance car brand, so the Grand Caravan isn’t going to be around much longer.

Bottom Line: Just be the Chrysler –

Brauer: It’ll just be the Chrysler Town & Country. So they need everything they can get to help maintain their hold and maybe even expand it, as they’d like to do, in that segment. A hybrid minivan would be a great little statement out there for them to make, a great line in the sand saying “We’re going to go beyond what everyone else is doing in this category, because we invented the category and we’re going to establish ourselves as market leaders yet again by making the first and only hybrid.”

Bottom Line: Yeah, I agree. I think that minivan mileage in the low to mid 20s eventually gets old. If they can knock it up to the high 20s or even the low 30s…

Brauer: Right, and with everything moving up, like all the other categories, they’re doing better in fuel efficiency, I think both of us would agree we feel like there’s been minimal progress on the minivan front. And that’s going to also hamper that car’s long-term and that segment’s long-term viability.

Bottom Line: Okay. But for what’s on the market right now, we’re looking at the Odyssey and the Kia Sedona, your top two choices.

Brauer: Two great minivans. And I know that sounds like a contradiction in terms by a lot of people’s definition, but they are very good people movers.

Bottom Line: Terrific. Thanks, Karl.

Brauer: Absolutely.