What year was the first minivan made

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On November 2nd, 1983, the world's first minivan rolled off of Chrysler's assembly line. It was the vehicle that saved Chrysler from financial doom — and in the process, shaped the automotive landscape for thirty years to come.

In the late 1970's and early 1980's, there wasn't really an ideal vehicle for families. Sedans and station wagons were shrinking to save fuel in the wake of two oil crises. Full-size vans were built on pickup underpinnings, with truck-like driving characteristics and poor fuel economy. The term "sport utility vehicle" hadn't been coined yet, but the four-wheel-drive vehicles that would later take on that name were rough, unrefined off-roaders, best suited for snowy or rural parts.

What was missing from the market was a family vehicle that drove like a car, got good fuel economy, and had room enough for a family. Chrysler's minivan was the first vehicle designed from the ground up to fit that need, and it was a revelation.

The boxy design and high roof maximized interior space. A sliding side door made stuffing kids in the back a breeze. Since it was built on a small car platform, it sat lower than a trucklike full-size van, and the front-wheel-drive architecture gave a flat floor for passengers and cargo. It fit in the same parking spaces as a car, but the huge cargo area and rear hatch let it carry everything a suburban family might want to haul around. With the seats removed, it could even haul 4'x8' plywood sheets laying flat, something no sedan or station wagon could do.

Chrysler's van triplets — the Chrysler Town and Country, Dodge Caravan, and Plymouth Voyager — sold like mad. Even after competing American and Japanese brands caught on, Chrysler's minivans still dominated the segment they invented. The success brought Chrysler back from the verge of extinction and into profitability in the 1990's; in 2008, with the company once again teetering, Chrysler still held 41% of the US minivan market.

First-generation Dodge Caravan on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History

Just as Chrysler became synonymous with minivans, minivans became synonymous with 1990's suburbia. But even as the craze died down, the influence of Chrysler's original minivan shaped car design.

In the 90's, with gasoline prices dropping to baffling lows, families turned to sport utility vehicles. SUVs had the same rear hatch, cargo capacity and passenger space buyers had come to love in minivans, with a macho image no frumpy Caravan could touch. But the smooth ride of a car-based people hauler was hard to part with. In a weird form of automotive evolution, SUVs started getting lower to the ground, less threateningly truckish and more comfortable for errand running. In short, they were turning into minivans.

Take a walk down any suburban street today. Look at what most families drive their kids around in. Chances are it's roomy, carlike, low enough to the ground for short legs to hop in, but with a roof high enough that mom and dad won't hit their heads adjusting a car seat. It's likely got a hatch at the rear, and with the seats folded down it'll swallow up all the sports equipment, camping gear, and kid detritus a parent could want to haul around.

Depending on the make and model, it might be termed a sport utility vehicle, a crossover, a wagon, or a people hauler. No matter what people call it, it's been shaped by Chrysler's minivan.

Image: Wikimedia / CZmarlin

Dimensions of a 1984 Plymouth Voyager (image: allpar.com)

If the minivan were a person, now in its mid-30s, it might be shopping for a minivan of its own to haul the kids to soccer practice and take family vacations to Myrtle Beach. But it also might stare at itself in the mirror, check for a receding hairline, and ask some serious question like “How did I get here?” and “What am I doing with my life?”

When Chrysler introduced the Dodge Caravan and Plymouth Voyager in 1983, the company was on the brink of collapse. It was a situation that sounds like it could have come from yesterday’s headlines: the company was nearly bankrupt and surviving off a $1.5 billion loan from Uncle Sam. At the time, Lee Iacocca and Hal Sperlich were heading up Chrysler. Both men had worked on the 1963 Mustang and both had been ignominiously fired from Ford. Sperlich’s dismissal resulted, in part, from his constant exhortations to Henry Ford II to move forward with something Sperlich was calling the “mini-max” – a smaller version of Ford’s popular Econoline, named for minimum exterior, maximum interior. Market research had determined that for such a veheicle to be a success, it needed three critical elements: the floor had to be kept low enough for women to comfortably drive it, it must be small enough to fit in a garage, and the engine had to be far enough from the driver to provide “crush space” in the event of an accident. Ford dismissed the idea but by the time Sperlich ended up at Chrysler he would, with Iacocca’s help, get the struggling auto manufacturer to put nearly half of that $1.5 billion toward the development of a truly game-changing vehicle.

The 1984 Dodge Caravan (image: Autoblog)

In the early 1970s, a team of 100 Chrysler engineers had been collaborating on a project that was being referred to in-house as the “garageable van.” The name pretty much describes what they were going for: a spacious family vehicle that could fit in a standard garage. Money was obviously a huge problem for Chrysler, and due to the massive development costs tied to creating an entirely new model, the project was never approved. The failing company was afraid to be the first to market with an untested vehicle. The thought was, if there was a market for these miniature vans, someone else –GM and Ford, namely– would be producing them. But Chrysler needed to take a risk. And in 1980 Iacocca forced the company to allocate the necessary funds and, under the guidance of Sperlich, the design team moved forward.

1984 Dodge Caravan (image: Autoblog)

Sperlich’s background was in product planning. This meant that it was his job to find the right balance of power, speed, space, and cost that’s essential to a successful vehicle. He envisioned a van that could be built on a car chassis. Something more than a station wagon but less than a full size van. Luckily, Chrysler had just the thing. The minivan was built on a modified version of the recently introduced K-Car chassis that was the basis for most of Chrysler’s cars at the time. The front-wheel-drive K-Platform let Chrysler keep the overall size down and maintain an expansive, open interior – qualities that previous research proved to be essential. The final height of the first minivan would be just 64 inches – 15 inches lower than the smallest van on the market at the time. The overall form of the new vehicle was called a “one-box” design, as opposite to the three-box design –hood, cabin, trunk– of standard cars. The other distinguishing features of the new minivan were its car-like features – notably including power windows, comfortable interiors, a nice dashboard, and front-wheel drive. These also explain the appeal of the vehicle. Not only did it fit in a garage like a car, but it actually drove like a car, while also providing plenty of room for the kids and luggage and giving mom a nice, high view of the road.

But what explains the minivan’s most iconic feature – the single, sliding door? That, it seems, was a bit of value engineering that just stuck. From early in the design process, it was determined that the new vehicle would be targeted toward families. The sliding door made it easy to for people to quickly enter or exit the vehicle and, with its lack of hinges, the sliding door was seen as a safer option for children. Initially, the door was only installed on one side to save on manufacturing costs during the cash-strapped company’s tentative foray into an entirely new market. When the van debuted, no one complained. So why mess with success?

The 1949 DKW Schnellaster (image: wikimedia commons)

Although Chrysler may have been the first to market with the minivan, but they didn’t invent the idea of the miniature van. Small vans and large cars were in production in Europe and Asia since the 1950s, such as the idiosyncratic Stout Scarab, the iconic Volkswagen bus, and the DKW Schnellaster (above image), a 1949 FWD vehicle that has been called “The Mother of all modern minivans.”

But in 1983 when Chrysler introduced the Voyager and the Caravan –named for its origins, “car and van” – they almost literally created the mold for the minivan. Not only that, but they created an entirely new market. The vehicle wasn’t sexy and it wasn’t even that great of a car, but it was an immediate success. Road and Track called it “a straightforward, honest vehicle. Honest in the sense that is is designed to be utilitarian. Yet it is clean and pleasant to look at. It doesn’t pretend to be what it’s not.” Car and Driver were even more effusive, reporting that the new models from Chrysler were “a sparkling example of the kind of thinking that will power Detroit out of its rut and may very well serve to accelerate Chrysler’s drive back to the big time.” Indeed, Chrysler couldn’t make them fast enough, and drivers waited weeks for the minivan. It was a practical car that the baby boomers needed. The success of the minivan helped bring the company back from the edge of bankruptcy. As the minivan turns 30, its story seems more relevant now than ever. Hopefully, history will repeat itself and Detroit will once again start producing some exciting, game-changing automobiles.

Sources:

Paul Ingassia, Engines of Change: A History of the American Dream in Fifteen Cars (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012); Michael L. Berger, The Automobile in American History and Culture: A Reference Guide (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing, 2001); ”The Caravan/Voyager Development Story,” Allpar; United States International Trade Commission, Minivans from Japan (1992); Paul Niedermeyer, “The Mother of All Modern Minivans,” The Truth About Cars(March 29, 2010); Charles K. Hyde, Riding the Roller Coaster: A History of the Chrysler Corporation (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003)