Could you ever own a minivan?

Mrs. Lono and I have had a Yukon and a minivan.

One was pretty cool, one was a dork mobile.

You can carry a ton of babies in either one.

One we could actually load our babies in and out of with relative ease.

One was like loading and unloading babies into a monster truck.

One was cool, but drove like a surplus Army jeep and got 12 mpg everywhere.

One was a dorkmobile, but rode like a Cadillac and drove like an Accord and got 17 mpg in the city and an honest 25 on the freeway.

And you could actually park it, unlike the other one.

Not saying one is right and one is wrong; I am saying one was right for us and one will be right for you, depending on what your priorities are.

 

We had a Caravan (with the wood paneling too!) growing up. It was great, I got the entire backseat to myself and we would take the third row out and put the dog back there for the trips to Kansas. It was great.

Most vehicles now come with car seat adapters, so as long as you only have one or two and four doors, why get a minivan?

However, most of them come nowadays with the DVD attachment, right? It would have been wasted on me (I spent most of our long car trips reading in the backseat and got made fun of mercilessly for it) but for my cousin, who has two kids (one six, one three), it's a lifesaver.

 

Um, essentially because it's a big dorkmobile. No better reason.

As I stated, I know that's probably immature, but driving past the soccer field or the elementary school and seeing the fleet of minivans lined up ... it gives me cold chills.

 

If it was new and free... maybe.

 

My uncle had a Dodge Caravan the family jokingly called the "Babe Machine," so yes, yes I would.

 

That would be the one with the beaded side curtains, roach clip hanging from the mirror, tricked out sound system, heavy metal unicorn airbrushed on the side, built in cooler and the "Ass, Gas or Grass: No One Rides Free" bumper sticker.

 

Hey Waylon,

Not to burst your bubble, dude, but you're going to be in your 30s, married with a kid, and will spend a large percentage of the next several years covered in puke that is not your own. "Cool" has probably left the building.

If you and your wife have more than one vehicle, a (good) minivan is pretty great. We have a Toyota Sienna - decent mileage, rides very well, tons of space, and it's really really easy to get the kids in and out. (When my first-born was little I had a two-door, and getting him in and strapped into his car seat was an unbelievable pain in the ass.) I have a Honda Element, which is great around town, but not as practical on a long trip.

If you have just the one vehicle... well, admittedly, I wouldn't want to go everywhere in a minivan all the time either. But to haul kids around they're pretty unbeatable.. and that's going to be your live for the next 20 years or so.

 

We are hoping to have two children. if we were going for three or more, this suggestion would not work.

We have a F-150 with four doors and covered the bed of the truck with a cover just similar to the truck shown here. The covered bed can hualt a shitload of toys, chairs, Einsteins and other crap to Grandma's.



There is plenty of room, you keep street cred and it is still a truck to do yard work with and move things.

We bought it used through CarMax. You can pick up a great one for about 18-20K right now.

 

This is somewhat unrelated, but it's always entertaining to compare current circumstances to those of earlier generations. My one grandfather crammed his kids (at any given point, four at a time) into various automobiles, like a giant Ford Fairlane and a beat up VW bus, whatever he could procure. And the cars sucked. The heating source on the VW dashboard was too weak to heat the whole van, so he put up a makeshift wall behind the driver's seat, separating the front and the back, and his kids would have to huddle in the back to stay warm while he was in the front, nice and toasty. He is, by the way, probably the kindest person I've ever known. Still, try that today and you'd probably get arrested.

 

Right now I'll go for style over substance. I don't see babies on the horizon any time soon. In that vein, what's the Jimmy Choo of SUVs right now?

 

Everything you say is true. And, yet, there is no way I could force myself to tool around with the rugrats back and forth to soccer practice in a minivan. Character flaw, I guess

That and I think I've seen way too many comedies at this point where it's used as an immediate indicator of soulless suburbanism, helicopter parenting, etc., etc.