According to allpar.com, most of Chrysler’s problems with their 4-speed automatics was due to using improper transmission fluid.Chrysler’s own service literature was partly to blame.
Late’80s through mid ‘90s owners’ ands shop manuals allowed for small additions of the cheaper and more available Dexron fluid to top up these transmissions.
A lot of quick lubes and even authorized dealers interpreted this to mean that there was little or no difference between the recommended “ATF +3” and Dexron.
Not So!! A complete fill of Dexron will kill these transmissions.
Another problem existed with computer controlling the transmission. My '91 Grand Caravan, which my daughter now owns had a transmission"brain transplant" to a 2000-patented update package and has had no transmission troubles in 5 years and over 60,000 miles.
The whole"tall overall, short from floor to ceiling" concept of the typical SUV has always seemed stupid to me.
When I decided to downsize from the Grand Caravan I bought an Aztek which is really a short-wheelbase minivan in pseudo “crossover SUV” clothing.
My former 2 Chrysler-built short vans were very good vehicles, but nowadays Chrysler loads its dealers up with well-equipped “Grand” vans and dismal loss-leader short vans. You can still get short Chryslerswell-equipped but you have to special order.
I wanted immediate gratification which meant Aztek or Rendezvous.
Oh, and DrLoveGun , we play a lot of KISS in our minivan and it sounds just as “good” as it would in, I dunno, a Firebird or something. I have a feeling that might be of interest to you.
Hey, my parents, my brother, and I fit in a Civic… and my mother had a Chevette when we were little.
Anyway, as to what to look for in a minivan, just look for a big chrome H on the front. You can’t go wrong. Try the early four-cylinder four-regular-door ones; they’re more economical and fun to drive.
Also take a look at Impreza WRX wagons. If she drives one, she won’t look at another minivan.
Also try an old BMW 5- or 7-series sedan. BMW takes care of the owners of their older cars, often selling parts at or near cost and recommending independent mechanics to the owners. An old 535i (one of the best big driver’s cars ever built, btw) sells for less than $5000, so whatever you could lose on maintenence you’ll make up for on depreciation costs. They’re also big, safe, and reasonably good on fuel, better than a minivan would be.
Well, if you’re gonna consider non-minivans, you may want to look at station wagons. Smaller, but still much roomier then a sedan and more fun to drive then a minivan to boot.
We got a used Toyota Sienna and are very happy with it. A little more money than a used Dodge probably, but we have always gotten hundreds of thousands of miles out of Toyotas.
The big thing to watch for if you have kids - get leather seats. Cheerio crumbs brush right off and lemonade wipes right up.
What I like best about mini vans is the sliding doors. It makes getting stuff in and out easier, IMO, especially when compared to our other car, a Saturn wagon. Stepping around the hinged doors is a pain in the but when you’re still dealing with car seats and the like. I’m sure the Element is quite roomy inside, but getting stuff …oh wait, aren’t the rear doors hinged backwards on this thing? That’ll make things much better. Carry on! Never mind me…
sniffle It makes me happy to see people saying lovely things about mini-vans! I’m so tired of seeing parents lugging their children around in Gi-normous SUVs that get terrible gas mileage and don’t really have a whole lot of room for hauling things around.
I’m biased though - I learned to drive in our Chrysler mini-van. I loved that thing. We drove it to from CA to DC and back one summer - roomie, comfortable. Looked like crap when we finally got rid of it - pain was peeling off all over the car - it was a 1990. SOmeone told me that you’ll see a lot of cars from the early 90s with peeling paint because of whatever clear sealant was prevelant in the car industry at the time - regardless of make or model - I don’t know if that’s true.
Our Chrysler had transmission problems so I don’t know that I would recommend it but I loved that car! I could park it on a dime!
The 1990s-era MPVs were pretty bad. The notion behind them was that they’d be a sort of hybrid between an SUV and a minivan – a Multi-Purpose Vehicle; unfortunately, it was more of a bastard child of an SUV and minivan, without the positive aspects of either. It was all Mazda could come up with for a while, however, especially since their new masters in Dearborn wouldn’t let them re-badge any of the Ford SUVs or develop their own. The run of the first generation MPV ended in 1998, and there was no 1999 model. In June of 1999, however, Mazda introduced the 2000 model MPV – a complete redesign, based on the platform for the Mazda 626. It offered many of the new features of the newer Honda Odyssey, which at the time was selling faster than they were being made, including the third-row seat that folded flat into a well behind the seat, sliding rear doors on both sides, and some new features unique to the Mazda (the Slide-by-Side second row seats, which can be split into two buckets or can slide together to create a bench-style seat, and power windows that rolled down on both rear doors). The MPV was 14 inches shorter than the Odyssey and several thousand cheaper (since Honda dealers were tricking them out with aftermarket options to drive up the price – they were in such demand that people were paying over MSRP for them anyway). The biggest drawbacks to the 2000 MPV were that it was somewhat smaller than most of the other minivans on the market, and it was seriously underpowered - the 2.6L V6 that moved the 626 around quite nimbly was way overworked with the extra weight of the minivan.
My second child was also born in June of 1999, and my wife’s old 626 wasn’t going to cut it for us any longer, so we started minivan shopping. I desperately wanted an Odyssey, but I couldn’t see waiting months for delivery and overpaying by thousands for one. Given that my wife’s 626 had served us very well with relatively few problems for the prior 6 years, and that we liked the features of the new MPV, and the price was better than almost anything else on the market, we bought one in August 1999. We put nearly 100,000 miles on it between August of 1999 and June of 2004. Only mechanical problem we had with it in that time was that the water pump died at about 80K miles – we had the exact same thing happen with the 626. Otherwise, we were so happy with it that we bought a 2004 model MPV last June to replace it – we’d had good luck with it so far, but the trade-in value was only going to go down once we broke 100K miles, and I wasn’t sure how much past 100K miles I wanted to push a vehicle from the first model year of a new design.
Mazda/Ford addressed the power problem with the 2002 model MPV, which introduced a new 3.0L V6 (the Duratec power plant that’s in several other Ford products). Consumer Reports and others seem to give the MPV mediocre grades for reliability over the last several years, so our experience may not be characteristic, but so far (18K miles in 9 months) I’ve seen little reason to think that our new MPV won’t hold up as well as the first one did. At any rate, I’ll take my chances with it over the Chrysler products, which are notorious for transmission problems, and the price difference between the MPV and the Toyota Siena or Honda Odyssey was still great enough that it’ll more than cover the cost of repairing any problems we have with it.
