Minivan Evolutionary Marker...?

The greatest people and stuff movers known to humankind are minivans. End of sentence. If you're still with us on that topic, then you'll agree that there have been some stupendously great evolutionary changes in the breed.

First up is the actual establishment of the concept, put into production. Where exactly that started is up for debate and we'll leave that for another discussion or feel free to duke it out in the comments below.

After that, the next major milestone was the switch from RWD to FWD (and the inevitable AWD mutants), generating a far more car-like ride and handling.

Next came the dual sliding passenger doors that made the already wonderfully utilitarian genre even more so. Whether making those doors powered and remote is a related but detestably negative update, as makers never seemed to get the bugs worked out.

One of the greatest inventions was the completely disappearing third row seat, which removed the need to pull out and store those heavy thrones. Putting wheels on the bottom didn't cut it. Eventually, manufacturers split that third row and that was a wonderful thing.

Carmakers struggled with the issue of the heavy second row seats until Chrysler created "Stow N Go", the stupendously amazing engineering feat allowing them to fold and disappear completely into the floor (while also creating under-floor storage the likes consumers had never seen previously). Were the seats a little less comfortable? Some say yes, but we never thought so.

Competitors struggled and to this date have not superseded this amazing innovation. But here's one of the latest, from Hyundai/Kia, named "Slide-N-Stow". While very good, it still isn't quite up to the magic of the Chrysler solution. Good try, though. We need more thinking like this.