Symbolically, people who drive a mini-van are telling their fellow motorists that they’re domesticated, they’re harmless and they’re fairly uninteresting–“the things that go along with domestic life when you’re settled in a family and moving toward middle age,” says Northwestern University sociology professor Bernard Beck. Which is one reason Chicago attorney John Watson would never be caught dead in one of the popular vehicles.
“I’m 33 now and I’m doing everything I can to stay young and stay feeling young in an effort to fight off the inevitability of turning into my parents,” says the Lincolnshire resident, who has two young children.
“To me, the mini-van is just one more step toward that station wagon that my parents used to drive around in,” he adds. “Driving one would be like you’re surrendering to the forces of middle age and parenthood.”
Watson is not alone in his feelings, says Beck.
There are two sides to the story of the incredibly popular mini-van: People hate them or love them. And there seems to be little middle ground, says Beck.
That dichotomy has been emphasized in recent years with the rapidly growing popularity of the mini-van.
Though they were introduced just more than a decade ago, mini-vans have become an icon. As a group they have outsold each individual passenger car. Look for any locale such as public pools, supermarkets, schools, etc., and you’ll find mini-vans almost on top of each other, says Beck.
More than a million mini-vans have been sold each year in the U.S. since about 1990, according to Automotive News. Sales of Dodge Caravans, Plymouth Voyagers, Chrysler Town & Countrys, Mazda MPVs, Chevrolet Luminas, Toyota Previas and Ford Windstars reached almost 1.25 million last year, Automotive News reported.
Chrysler Corp., the mini-van leader, alone sold nearly 500,000 mini-vans last year. That’s more than twice as many as 10 years earlier. Now They account for more than 40 percent of the carmaker’s sales.
“On a practical level, a mini-van serves the need of people who have lots of people or stuff to carry around,” Beck says. “And the important thing is the mini-van is roughly car size and not too big for the garage or the road.”
Though it’s a thought that people such as Watson dread, Beck says the mini-van is a substitute for the station wagon. “Except it works better and has more usable room than a station wagon,” he says.
Longtime mini-van owner Felicia Walter agrees.
“When you haul kids around a lot, you need all the space you can get,” says Walter, who with her husband, Kenneth, has three children age 6 to 11.
Walter, of Mt. Prospect, who has been driving a mini-van since 1986, owns a 1991 Dodge Grand Caravan, which gives her an extra foot of depth for cargo space in its hatch area.
In addition to comfortably seating her family of five, Walter says the mini-van’s space is “wonderful” for hauling around extra people or storing snowsuits, blankets, toys and other family items for road trips.
“We’ve gotten a washing machine in the back of our mini-van without taking the seat out,” Walter says proudly.
In addition, Walter says she feels safer in a “bigger” vehicle such as a mini-van. “I like being higher up than a passenger car,” she says.
But bigger is not better for those who don’t like mini-vans, particularly when driving behind them.
“They’re inconvenient for other drivers unless the other drivers happen to be in big vehicles as well,” says Beck. “Mini-vans not only obscure your vision on the road but they’re associated with conservative drivers. And if you’re in a hurry and there are mini-vans around you, you despair of the big mini-van driver as being someone who goes slowly and cautiously.”
In addition, those who hate mini-vans say they are aesthetically as interesting as boiled eggs. “They all look alike and they all look big and slow,” says Watson.
“And their performance is probably comparative to their looks.”
And then there’s the fact that mini-vans generally register low on the excitement meter. “Even some of the people who drive them hate them in the sense of the bumper stickers you see on the backs which say `I’d rather be skydiving’–something exciting and fun,” says Beck.
“A mini-van is a reminder that you have obligations in the world and that you’re dealing with what you owe to others rather than what you’re free to do for yourself,” he says.
But other than these complaints, those who dislike the vans admit there’s truly not to much to be critical about.
In fact, Watson, who owns a GMC Jimmy, a sport-utility vehicle, says mini-vans make perfect sense for a family.
“They’re easier to get in and out of than a sport-utility vehicle or a car, and you don’t have to reach over seats and kill your back to get to things,” he says.
“And mini-vans make it easier to do things with other people–my wife notices that when she’s carting kids around the neighborhood,” he adds. “You certainly have the ability to throw more kids in a mini-van than a sport-utility vehicle.”
Watson even admits that if he and his wife had another child, their Jimmy would no longer be functional.
“A sport-utility vehicle is perfect for a family of four,” he says. “After that, a mini-van is probably our only option. And then I would have to kill myself.”
