Chrysler’s new minivans demand respect

But customers who are willing to pay for it can get a better engine — either the 3.8-liter pushrod engine, which makes an adequate 197 horsepower, or the new, smoother and still more powerful 4.0-liter OHC engine. The six-speed automatic transmission that comes with these engines boosts efficiency so that even with more power, the gas mileage is about the same with the bigger engines.

If the company really wants to offer an array of engine choices, rather than three different gas-powered V6 engines, a fuel-efficient diesel option would be a worthwhile choice. Chrysler already builds diesel vans for export to Europe, so we can hope that some of them will come here eventually.

Another issue is while customers can upgrade to a good engine, they have no ability to avoid mediocre ride and handling qualities. The company says the Dodge Grand Caravan models equipped with the 4.0-liter engine also receive sport suspension that is supposed to provide better control, but in back-to-back testing on winding roads, little improvement was evident from the regular suspension on all the other versions of the van.

Van customers have no expectation of racecar handling, but as Honda’s Odyssey demonstrates, it is possible to have very acceptable handling in a van, so it is disappointing that the new Chrysler vans wallow and bounce through curves with very little control. This is a matter of choice, rather than cost, because different shock, springs and swaybar specifications don’t cost any more.

Jakubiec explained that the engineering team drove prototypes 150,000 miles all over the country when making the final calibrations, so the vans would perform appropriately for customers everywhere, but the soggy handling demonstrates the continuing influence of Detroit’s bombed-out roads on domestic product development. In vans that rise to the top of nearly every other category it is a frustration that better handling is not available. This, at least, is a problem that is easily addressed by the company without an expensive redesign, so we can hope that next year’s models could offer improvement.

One other issue with the new vans is the quality of the interior materials. The cabin design of both vans is good, but in keeping with the recent unfortunate trend toward cheap, hard plastic (it isn’t just Chrysler, everybody’s doing it), many interior components seem to have been picked from the toy aisle at Wal-Mart.

But the handling, headphones and cheesy plastics are only minor flaws in vans that have otherwise returned to the lead pack. The Swivel ‘n Go seats, table and satellite video should secure Chrysler’s hold on family van market leadership for the foreseeable future by placating the young ‘uns while reminding their parents of the VW microbuses of their youth, when their home televisions only received three channels.

Maybe the attraction will even be enough to lure some non-van people across the cultural divide.

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