buying a minivan: carfax anyone?

[boodlefoof]

Hi all,

 

Well, with a one year old and with another baby due any day now, my wife and I are looking at minivans. We're looking at the Toyota Sienna, Honda Odyssey and Dodge Grand Caravan.

 

We are a little price constrained and so the Caravans look pretty attractive. Both my and my wife's family had caravans in the 80s and 90s and never had any of the horrible problems that I hear people talk about, so I'm not quite sure about the prejudice against these cars.

 

Anyway, we came across an odd advertisement for an '01 Caravan with only 70 miles on it. Curious if anyone could run a carfax. VIN is 1b8gp45361b147221.

 

Thanks in advance anyone.

[DavyZ]

My family's Caravan/Voyager in the '80s went through three transmissions (under warranty fortunately). My parents didn't learn their lesson and bought another in the '90's. Same thing: transmission troubles. They were all the V6 vans. Then, somehow, they bought a dogged out turbo 4 cyl version of the van that was actually faster and lasted longer than the other vans! It just would not die. No tranny problems with that one FWIW.

 

If I was to do a mini-van, I would do a Chevy Venture (although I'm not even sure if they make them any longer--I'm not in the market!).

 

Davy

[savageskaterkid]

Toyota Sienna is awesome, just don't get the awd version. Tires are WAY to expensive and they wear pretty fast.

[RedEvilrps13]

as a former toyota tech, i can vouch for the Siennas, and savage is right, the AWD version chews through tires, and they are runflat which is expensive.

 

BUT!

 

you can put regular tires on it and just buy the spare tire kit (since it has run flats it doesn't come with one).

 

and keeping up on your tire rotations (every other oil change) helps too, which alot of people don't realize.

 

the new dodge caravan is absolute crap. i had to drive one back to enterprise rent a car for a customer, and this thing had more squeeks bangs and rattles than my modded and gutted 240sx.

 

the chevy venture is a load of shiza as well, and they don't hold up too well over the years.

 

i say either Sienna or Oddessey. both have stunning reputations, great resale values, and are super dependable.

[savageskaterkid]

what is this spare tire kit you speak of? We stopped using runflats, where just running some regular street tires. My parents might like to hear about the spare kit, as the thought of one of the tires blowing kinda sucks.

[RedEvilrps13]

if you go to the dealer they should be able to look it up, its not necessarily a kit at all dealers, the one i worked at offered the tire, the jack, and the tools as a kit though.

[cygnusx1]

We just went through EXACTLY the same thing. Let me tell you what we found.

 

The Sienna feels and drives like a bus. The Odyssey drives MUCH more like a car and has excellent visibility. We chose the Odyssey because of that simple fact. We wanted AWD but the Sienna with AWD was too expensive and ate waay too much fuel.

 

We ended up looking for a used Odyssey but they hold value so well that it made more sense to get a new 2007 at the end of the model year. We ended up getting a fully loaded $32K model for $25K because Honda needed to move the 07's out. It get's 19mpg in town and 26mpg! highway. Thanks to the ECO mode that drops out 3 cylinders under light cruising. We love this thing. I never thought...

 

More interior volume than a Suburban!