Let’s be honest, no car gets a bigger stigma than the minivan. People are so driven by this that an entire class of vehicles, the crossover, was invented. So how uncool is it to drive a minivan? I’m here to tell you in fact minivans are one of the coolest cars out there. 

Now, if you care a lot about what people think about you, the type of car you buy will be driven by that. You won’t want a minivan because it says you’re practical, have a family, and care about your needs. 

Somewhere the image of minivans got transferred from practical to boring, and the automotive equivalent to giving up on life. How that happened probably has to do with pop culture and topic for a whole other conversation. 

Hopefully, by the time you’re reading this, you’ll understand why minivans are much cooler than you think, and might even change your meaning of cool. 

Table of Contents

• Room
• Practicality
• The Fun Stuff
• In Sum

Room

There is no comparison for the room that a minivan offers. Except maybe some large extended wheelbase SUVs, the capacity to seat 7 or more passengers just can’t be compared. 

The 3rd row of most crossovers is a joke, meant only for small children. The 3rd row of almost any minivan can hold grown adults easily making it an actual usable space. 

It’s not just there for emergencies. Just compare the legroom of the best-selling large SUV to the best-selling minivan.

Now looking at this chart you might say “well the suburban has more front and second-row legroom.” You’d be right. 

However, if you look at the exterior dimensions you’d see that the minivan has almost the same interior space as the larger suburban with the packaging more efficient than even its smaller brother the Chevrolet Tahoe. 

Practicality

Minivans pay attention to detail. The designers spend countless hours researching what families and people want. 

Check this out, sliding rear doors. You and your kids can get in and out with ease, without the worry of dinging another car.

Sliding doors also make for a much wider opening than normal swinging doors, so no bumping and tumbling your way in. As a bonus almost all minivans have automatic sliding doors now, just a push of a button opens them up. 

How about a Fully Flat load floor for practicality. The 2021 Chrysler Pacifica has the trademarked “stow-and-go” seating feature that fully tucks the rear seats into its floor! No need to remove heavy clunky seats, so you can fit sheets of plywood or drywall.

Yes, you heard that right, full 4’x8’ sheets fit into this minivan. So not only is the minivan one of the best people movers, but it can also seriously double as a work truck.

Even if you’re not carrying building supplies, the cargo room of all minivans is simply cavernous. It truly is meant to carry you and your stuff, not one or the other.

Just check out this luggage test by Autoblog on the 2021 Honda Odyssey if you want to be amazed. Starting to get a little less uncool to drive a minivan now eh?

The Fun Stuff

Believe it or not, minivans can be pretty fun to drive. Hear me out before you get into an uproar.

Firstly, they have a relatively low center of gravity because they’re not all jacked up pretending to be a rock climber. A low center of gravity makes for better weight balance in the turns. 

Second, the engine options in most vans are pretty decent. The V6 in the Honda Odyssey put out a stout 280 Horsepower and 287 horsepower in the Chrysler Pacifica. 

That’s some decent pep to get you around. How about this, the Honda can get to 60 mph in 6.5 seconds! That was faster than some sports cars 20 years ago! 

I’m not saying this will be your next grand tourer or anything, but hey it doesn’t hurt if your practicality came with a little bit of fun.

In Sum

How uncool is it to drive a minivan? Hopefully, this has shown that it’s indeed pretty cool. Go against the grain, you may find how much you actually like it. 

Check out what else you can do with your van here.