Demographics Of Minivan Drivers
View the best minivans based on our rankings then compare minivan reviews and view photos of your top minivans. Best Cars for the Money Best Cars for Families The 2019 Honda Odyssey has a long list of family-friendly features and a refined, spacious interior. It's also fairly fun to drive.
Can a 'man van' make the minivan - a vehicle long associated with carpools, soccer practice and unpleasant road trips - cool again? Chrysler is trying to do just that with its new Dodge Grand Caravan RT, unveiled today at the Chicago Auto Show. Dodge says the minivan drives like a sports car thanks to its suspension, 283 horsepower engine and wider tires that ride a half-inch lower to the ground. But can it shed the minivan's mommy label?
'We consider ourselves to be the inventors of minivans and feel we can change the conversation on minivans,' says Ralph Gilles, chief designer and president and CEO of Dodge Brands. Over the years, the minivan has been seen as a mommy-mobile able to provide easy access and shuttle children to ballet and swim lessons while surviving numerous types of spills.
But with the new Grand Caravan RT, Dodge has given the vehicle a makeover on everything from functionality to interior and earned itself the hip nickname 'man van' because of the all-black leather interior that resembles a man cave. Between the expected high performance and the more man-friendly design, Dodge is rebranding the Grand Caravan RT as a vehicle that can be used for tailgate parties and weekend warrior projects. Gilles said a good friend of his who has a go-cart store and runs a dog rescue operation on the side helped inspire the design.
The 'man van' takes aim at mommy mobiles and the,' the Toyota Sienna, marketed in ads featuring a hipster family rapping about the streets of the cul-de-sac in minivan. But, the man van isn't just a marketing campaign to get daddies driving minivans.
Many elements of the Grand Caravan have changed, including the stylish look that some may find dark and claustrophobic but could serve as a vehicular sanctuary for some men. 'For so many guys the thought of a minivan is it's just not cool,' says Sarah Barrand, who blogs. 'Guys going through the dating process want that souped up sports car and then life changes, then it's not so fun lugging those car seats in a sports car.'
The sportier new look of the Caravan could move dad from the into the driver's side. That's what happened with Barrand's family of six. Before purchasing the couple's minivan, she said she looked at the amount of seats and air circulation. 'My husband looked at the exterior, the tires, the shape of the mirrors, and to see if it had a sporty body and then he wanted to see how the interior coordinated,' she said.
'He looked for a chrome or wood looking dash and was into the carpet and if it matched the upholstery. 'I was more worried about price and he was worried about the look and how cool he was going to look in this van,' Barrand said. Although some state marketing strategies aren't gender based, she said, there is a social stigma surrounding owning a minivan for men. 'I think a salesman in general knows a woman is a little easier to sell a minivan,' Barrand said. 'I come in saying I would like a minivan and we're going to try to sell my husband on style.'
'We don't necessarily encourage any selling or marketing to any particular gender. We just want to sell vehicles,' said Dave Coleman, a new car sales manager at Phillips Chrysler Jeep Dodge in Ocala, Fla. 'The vast majority of the decisions are made by females.
Whether by themselves or as a family, 60 percent of the time the decision is made by the feminine gender.' The loss of personal style is a hard pill to swallow and some men may feel boxed in by the minivan's traditional shape and style., one father attempts to take paternity back and salvage hotness by adding magnetic flames to his minivan. But it was cool once. For years the minivan ruled the roost. 'You had the station wagon but it wasn't cool, then the minivan came out and didn't have a stigma attached to it,' automotive Web site Edmunds.com senior analyst Karl Brauer said. But the minivan began to lose its image as the newest cool family vehicle on the block when the sports utility vehicle came on the scene. With overwhelming popularity came negative connotations that transformed minivans into a stodgy vehicle that defined your life by little boxes - albeit, moving boxes.
The less functional SUVs had appeal because there was no frumpy and domesticized association with the vehicle Bauer said. But even SUVs eventually began to lose ground to crossover vehicles that had high market appear without the sliding doors of minivans. In the last five years, sales of minivans have dropped by one-half, moving from 1,110,907 in 2005 to 503,242 in 2010, according to Edmunds.com. Last year, the Chrysler Town and Country sold 112,275 to become the top-selling minivan. The model was followed by the Honda Odyssey (108,182), the Grand Caravan (103,323), the Sienna (98,337) and trailed by the Ford Transit Connect (27,405). The minivan market has shrunk from 6.6 percent of the overall automotive market in 2005 to 4.4 percent in 2010. The minivan stigma that men feel about driving them has been 'one of the toughest nuts to crack over the last 10 years,' Bauer said.
The Nissan Quest ' commercial from years ago morphed in 2010 into dad preparing for triplets by watching his - an act that appeared much more frightening than triplets. 'I don't have any issue driving a minivan,' said Brauer, a family man. 'I know they are the most functional vehicles for towing people around. There's no better option than the natural advantages of a boxed space for space efficiency.'
For Sarah and Matt Barrand, that was their now 13-year-old Dodge Caravan - a minivan Matt began calling a 'man van' long before 2011. 'There's a dedicated minvan demographic who doesn't care about the image but loves the functionality,' Brauer said. The audience the Caravan must reach to break new ground is people who aren't adverse to the minivan market. The minivan already appeals to nonfamilies - more than half the owners don't have children. 'I think women will find it appealing as much as men do,' says Gilles. But, can you win them all in the world of man van versus mom van? 'You have a spectrum of guys and customers - there are plenty of women that wouldn't be caught dead in a minivan - who are never, ever going to buy a minivan no matter how it's marketed,' Brauer said.
Demographics Of Minivan Drivers For Windows 7
DETROIT – Friends say her choice of vehicle makes her a typical suburban mom, but Jennifer Dionisio doesn’t care what they think. She drives a light-blue 2004 Ford Freestar minivan because it’s easy to load her three kids through the sliding doors.
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“I am who I am no matter what I drive,” the 31-year-old from the Detroit suburb of Madison Heights said this week as she was about to raise the rear door and unload her cart in a grocery store parking lot. But according to auto sales figures, fewer people are thinking like Dionisio, with minivan sales down 12.4percent during the first eight months of the year. Some automakers argue the downturn will pass as drivers seek alternatives to sport utility vehicles.
But the minivan of the future will look different, and among some consumers it will be replaced by crossover vehicles, the new-wave station wagons that are already eating away minivans’ market. Of the 14 minivans on the market, sales have dropped on all but the Honda Odyssey. Sales of half the vans are down by more than 20percent compared with the first eight months of 2005.
Ford Motor Co., which is getting out of the minivan business, predicts that 2006 sales will drop below a million for the first time since 1992 as the baby boomers who bought minivans age out of the child-rearing years. “I acknowledge that as a vehicle design, the minivan has a lot of very positive attributes,” said George Pipas, Ford’s U.S. Sales analysis manager.
“There’s a problem, though. A lot of vehicles have a lot of very popular attributes.” He’s referring mainly to car-based “crossover” vehicles, glorified station wagons such as the Ford Freestyle, GMC Acadia and Hyundai Santa Fe that carry as many people as minivans but have sleeker styling without the soccer mom label. Pipas said about 40 crossovers, many with three rows of seats, are now on the market, and that will rise to more than 70 by 2009.
“There’s 100 different model choices that consumers have that they didn’t have when the minivan was in its peak population,” Pipas said. Plus, there’s that soccer mom stigma created by Generation X, the people who followed baby boomers.
“Gen X no more considered a minivan than most people would consider eating soap,” said Art Spinella, president of CNW Marketing Research, an automotive research firm in Oregon. But Spinella still thinks the downturn in minivan sales is temporary, saying that the product should benefit from people seeking more fuel-efficient alternatives to big SUVs. Banking on Gen Y Children of baby boomers, or Generation Y, are now starting to have kids of their own who will look at minivans for fuel economy, carrying capacity and other options, Spinella said. Minivan sales rose quickly when Chrysler introduced them in 1983 as a 1984 model. In 1984, the first full year they were sold, 257,238 were purchased.
Sales crossed 900,000 in 1990 and peaked at 1.37million in 2000. DaimlerChrysler AG’s Chrysler Group, which still leads all manufacturers in minivan sales, is banking on the echo boom of Generation Y to keep sales of the Chrysler Town & Country and Dodge Caravan minivans strong.
Ann Fandozzi, Chrysler’s director of front-wheel-drive product marketing, said minivan sales are down so far this year mainly because people have delayed larger purchases because of economic uncertainty. She expects sales to recover later in the year and still hit 1.1million. Chrysler officials also point out that minivan sales have remained stable, around or above 1.1million, for the past 13 years. Pipas, however, said minivan sales have been boosted in recent years by increased sales to rental car companies and other fleet buyers. Fandozzi said demographics should help the venerable vans, pointing out that Generation Y is just moving into the family years, and birth rates are not expected to decline. “That automatically translates into minivan sales,” she said. Fandozzi said that much like baby boomers, the echo boomers are family-oriented and less image-conscious than Generation X.
General Motors Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Rick Wagoner falls between Ford and Chrysler on the outlook for minivans. In a recent interview with the Associated Press, he said sales aren’t growing, but they should remain stable about 1million per year. Sales of GM’s vans, the Pontiac Montana, Saturn Relay, Chevrolet Uplander and Buick Terazza, all are down more than 20percent from the first eight months of last year.
“Obviously, the segment isn’t booming,” Wagoner said. “We don’t expect robust growth. (But) we don’t expect it to go away.” Chrysler is coming out with new minivan models sometime in 2007, and that may also be causing people to delay purchases, said Mike Jackson, chairman and chief executive of AutoNation Inc., which owns multiple dealerships and is the largest U.S. Auto retailer. Focus on function In past years, Chrysler has introduced innovations with new models such as second-row seats that fold into the floor. The company won’t say specifically what its next-generation minivans will look like, but spokeswoman Kathy Graham said the focus will be on a more functional interior.
Demographics Of Minivan Drivers 2017
“People kind of use it as a family room on wheels,” she said. “Features that would either enhance or kind of make that family room experience better, I think, is what you’re going to see in the minivans of the future.” Toyota showed a glimpse of its future minivans at a Detroit auto show earlier this year with the big, boxy F3R concept that has three rows of stadium seats that convert into a lounge-like interior when the vehicle is at rest. The van, powered by a gas-electric hybrid engine, also has two flat-panel screens for movies or games. Carmakers likely will keep making longer minivan models with more cargo space, replacing shorter versions with crossovers, predicted Michael Robinet, vice president for global forecasting at CSM Worldwide. Join the Conversation We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. Although we do not pre-screen comments, we reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. We might permanently block any user who abuses these conditions.
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