by Richard Harley

Created on: January 09, 2009

Imagine you're meeting your date at 7.00pm - her house. You tell her you'll pick her up and give her a ring when your outside. That's exactly what you do. You arrive at 6.55pm and ring her mobile. But she doesn't answer. In fact, she never speaks to you again. Ever. Thats because you turned up outside her house in a minivan. She now thinks you're a serial killer. Or a handyman. Or a slade trader. Or a combination of the three.

Let's examine the purpose of a minivan. They are small, nippy, narrow and designed for load carrying. It's a shame they can't do any of these properly. When buying a car one must always be willing to compromise. In the minivan owners case, however, it appears every part of the vehicle's functionality is compromised. Minivan's are slow - many of them have light, revvy engines designed to propel them to no-more-than-40mph in less than ten seconds. And that's all well and good (until you get into the 60 limit with a long queue of traffic behind you). Now conceive, if you can, a minivan with 3 passengers and luggage. Acceleration has halved and the magical 60mph target is now but a dream. Such is the affect that extra weight has on an extremely lightweight and weak engine. I think (I cannot say for certain) that my father's lawnmower has an engine capable of a higher top speed than many of the minivans that were available back in the mid 80's. How technology has moved on!

Exactly what image is portrayed by a minivan is hard to say. Of course, location has a large affect on what the general public may think as you waft around in a Bedford Rascal. If you're in England - they're likely to think you're going to rob them or repave your drive. The minivan is that uncool.

So we have established that the vehicles in question are slow, poor at load carrying and driven exclusively by murderers and hippy's. But, and this may be their only redeeming feature, they are easy to park. Their small and narrow chassis make parallel parking a doddle and the driving position (often in front of the front wheels) gives good visability. But let's not stray off topic. Minivans are a defunct vehicle in all but 3rd world countries. One should consider other options, such a smaller estate car (perhaps a Volvo) or a normal sized van (Transit). The image portrayed by these vehicles may be negative too - a beardy environmentalist in the case of the former and a loutish builder in the case of the latter - but both are leagues in front of the 30 year old minivan driver, the negative image of which can never be surpassed.

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