A recurrent question in mom groups on Facebook is, “which 3 row vehicle/minivan should we get?” I always try to chime in with my experience as a CPST because when you’ve got 2+ kids in car seats, unfortunately not all minivans will accommodate that safely. There are vehicles people come into car seat checks with that CPSTs automatically groan and go, “oh man.” lol I’m a member of a child passenger safety forum that also reviews vehicles and car seats and we hand out advice to parents needing help choosing those things for their family. That said, after this past week I really wanted to make my own post so it could be read/searched by people minivan shopping. Let’s just call it minivan shopping, lol, because most of us who start out wanting a 3 row SUV to avoid the soccer mom image end up conceding that minivans get better gas mileage and are easier to use with multiple small children.
My warning statement: this is not to insult or demean anyone who owns the vehicles I’m about to tear into, and I’m well aware we don’t always get a choice when desperately needing a vehicle to fit the family. When we were 3 row vehicle shopping I wanted the best we could afford, and newest does not always equal best. After researching I purposefully chose an older van that rivaled the prices of newer vans of other brands because the safety and features were better.
Anyway. We went on vacation last week. We got a rental minivan. You don’t get to choose what you want specifically, just model. So I chose 7 seater minivan, since choosing 8 seater like we’re used to was a significant price jump. Get there, our options were 2019 Dodge Caravan or pay extra for the Toyota Sienna. Hindsight: I would’ve paid up to a couple hundred dollars more for the Toyota. Seriously. Saving the money was not worth what that stupid Caravan put us through all week. Note: Dodge Grand Caravan, the now discontinued Chrysler Town and Country, and Volkswagen Routan are all the SAME van with different name badges. They are not family friendly in the slightest.
#1-there are only 3 tether anchors unless you go back to the 2001 model. (note I’m only talking tether anchors, not necessarily the lower anchors of LATCH). This doesn’t sound like an issue until you have more than one kid in a seat and can’t configure everyone in the safest way. It’s complicated because forward facing 5 point harness seats should ideally be harnessed, it reduces head excursion, and some seats even require it (meaning they did not pass US safety testing without tether use). This came into play for us this week, as I’ll explain later. If you have more than one child in a car seat, especially if there’s a possibility of more, you want more tether anchors. Current model Honda Odyssey has 5 tether anchors in the 7 seater, 6! in the 8 seater. Current generation Toyota Sienna has 4. 2011-2014 Sienna had only 3 (grr!), the 2004-2010 Sienna had 5 and is considered the easiest minivan ever for car seats. But they’re getting old. I have one. 2006-2010 Odyssey had 5-6 but that model isn’t recommended – major transmission issues, including a recall. Main idea: 3 tether anchors is bad.
#2-non adjustable, non removable headrests. Again a huge problem for forward facing 5 point harness seats, and for booster seats. Many seats require a certain amount of touching between the back of a child seat and the seat back of the vehicle seat. Headrests that don’t adjust or move make that near impossible.
#3-the 3rd row was tiny, tiny, tiny. Two kids fit with about 6 inches between, and they were in narrow car seats. This row also had weird geometry. The seat back was quite reclined and the seat bottom slanted towards the rear raising knees higher than bottom. Both of these things make people not fit it well, and car seats not fit it well.
#4- Only 3 sets of lower anchors from LATCH, and one of those is off center (3rd row). If you want to use it you’ll be taking up both 3rd row driver and middle positions.
#5- weird forward mounted seat belts in the 3rd row don’t fit anyone not in a car seat well. They’re too far forward to restrain you in a crash. And yet…that same row is horribly difficult to install forward facing seats in. So about the only thing that works is a rear facing seat, and that was rather difficult, too, because of how hard it was to get my 21 month old in and out of a rear facing seat in the 3rd row, especially with another car seat next to it.
Those are the things that directly affected child seat installation. But there were other things that left me lusting after my 13 year old Toyota Sienna. Like the fact we had no issues whatsoever loading all our luggage into my 8 seater Sienna, but it would not fit at all into the 7 seater Caravan. It was crazy how small it was inside, even with one less seat taking up space. Each time we flipped up a 2nd row seat to get to the 3rd row it would refuse to click back into place. Every. Single. Time. There didn’t seem to be a control anywhere for me to turn off/on cabin lights other than the map lights above my head. My oldest needed a light to see something and had to use the flashlight on his phone because there was no light in the 2nd or 3rd row that would come on except when you opened the door, an impossibility when flying down the highway. It’s like they forgot to give you a button? I can be hopeful that we just missed it but I don’t think so. We nearly drove back to the Orlando airport. Three times. To pay the fee to upgrade to a Toyota Sienna because this van drove us nuts every time we had to get in it.
In the interest of travelling convenience I left my lovely, easy to use, perfectly fit to my 3 & 5 year old car seats (Britax Frontier ClickTight and Diono Rainier/RXT) at home and brought RideSafer Travel vests for them to use instead. So we only had to lug one heavy car seat, my 21 month old’s Britax convertible, through the airport. I did trial runs with the vests in 3 different vehicles with both boys and they fit fine. Get them in the Caravan and realize that because of the awful geometry of the 3rd row that nearly folded them in half, the vest didn’t provide proper belt placement. The lap belt (supposed to be at hip/upper thighs) was on their belly, and the shoulder belt was across their necks. The teenager wasn’t going to fit well in the tiny 3rd row. So we ran to Wal-Mart. In the interests of being frugal, and since we already had expensive seats to use daily at home, I bought the cheapest forward facing 5 point harness seat they had: Cosco Finale. In a situation where it’s no seat or the Finale, it’s a good choice. But it’s a cheap seat and has some quirks. The combination of quirky child seat and quirky van made for a nightmare. The Cosco Finale must be tethered at all times. I needed 1 of the captain chairs for my teen, leaving only one for a Cosco Finale. I could install the other in the middle third row because it wouldn’t fit next to my 21 month old’s seat. So I had to install it in 3D (3rd row driver side) and choose to use the tether from 3C (3rd row center). Which is not allowed or recommended. But I couldn’t think of anything else to do short of slapping down $400 for car seats that we didn’t need. So I did it.
The aforementioned non removable non adjustable headrests were an issue, too. When left up they prevented the child seat from touching the vehicle seat back. When folded down (which isn’t allowed or recommended) it wasn’t a ton better, plus, yeah, not supposed to. Since I brought it up I’ll say I don’t recommend the Cosco Finale at all either unless there’s not much other choice in the budget. Hard to install, no padding, no protective foam, must be tethered at all times, the shoulder straps are set so close together they left red marks and scraped both the boys every time we got them in and out of the seats. The straps twisted horribly. Not great for airplane travel, either, since on the airplane it meant the seatbelt buckle was right in the middle of the kids’ backs. But this isn’t supposed to be a seat post.
The Dodge Grand Caravan/Chrysler Town & Country (or Town & Crappy as it’s known)/Volkswagen Routan is not a good family vehicle. If you’ve got more than one child you’re likely to run into an issue at some point, if you don’t, there’s a good chance you’re in that 90% of car seats that are used/installed incorrectly 😉 (I was once, too, it happens!) I’ve had too many families come in for seat checks saying they wish they’d known because now they were stuck in a vehicle with payments with no option of getting out of it and there was no safe way to restrain their children in it. It was just unbelievable to me that this shiny, brand new 2019 van left me with such a bad taste in my mouth, and so excited to see my beat up, old van when we got back home. The ease those car seats went in, the vests fit fine, all the luggage fit fine. Ahhhh.
So there’s my PSA. Avoid these vans at all costs if you need a kid hauler. Or even a multiple grown up hauler. Really? Just avoid them. The Chrysler Pacifica replaced the Town & Country and isn’t bad, but you have to buy the most expensive model just to get the safety ratings you can get on any of the Toyota Sienna or Honda Odyssey models. Another option to consider if you really, really want newer but can’t do Toyota or Honda is Kia Sedona. It stacks up well. For us? Next time we’ll pay more to not get stuck with one of these. For everyone else shopping? Go to car-seat.org and search the vehicles you’re looking at to see what issues people have had with what years. If you’re car seat shopping? Go to carseatblog.org or csftl.org (the website – do not go to the CSFTL Facebook group unless you want to be verbally thrashed) for in depth reviews and specs of seats. Not all seats work with all vehicles but some seats/cars make it really hard to find something to fit!
Resources:
https://thecarseatlady.com/vehicles/minivan/dodge-grand-caravan/
midwestcrunch 