The Search For A New MPV: Step 5 - Creepy Car Lot

A local tiny independent car lot had a Toyota Sienna and Dodge Chrysler Grand Caravan for sale in our price range...sounds like the setup for a bad joke. But it isn't.

Free tetanus shots with every purchase!

The lot had a 2007 Toyota Sienna Limited AWD that had caught my eye driving by two day prior and that's what we were gunning for. Previously, at the Honda dealership, the wife had been overwhelmed by the admittedly garish if well made interior of a latest gen Sienna and I wanted to know if the previous gen's interior was more to our liking. Spoiler alert; it was.

Things started off great when my wife pulled in and then got stuck in the driveway. It was tight, narrow and there was nowhere to turn around to pull out head-first into heavy traffic. We had to switch and I ended up driving the wrong way down the shoulder to another parking lot. White knuckles regaining color, we walked over to the Sienna. Right off the bad, we could see that it was dirty and there was a dent in the trunk. The closer we got the more scratches along the body became apparent.

We test drove it!

The front bumper was equally damaged. Nothing major but it had seen a couple of shopping mall mishaps in its day. The interior looked great but I still didn't know the mileage. Let me skip right to it; it had over 160K on it. Even with the asking price of $7K, we instantly were not interested. That's okay; let's sit in it, drive it and add or eliminate the model in general from the list!

But first, let's take a look at the 2006 Dodge Grand Caravan SXT they also had on the lot (term used loosely; more like a long driveway with cars jammed in them like some sort of party gone out of control). Walking up to it, it also was completely out of the running, with clear and present rust damage all over it. It had been smoked in and there was a tremendous amount of small damage and wear and tear. This vehicle had been used hard, put away wet and there was very little life left in it. The asking price was $2.3K. That's right, less than twenty-five hundred bucks. But that was probably high for this vehicle, to tell you the truth. This would be a good winter beater that would most likely end up nickel and diming you to death.

But the format of the vehicle was okay and the wife could envision driving it. We didn't take it for a test drive, though. But, for me, I mentally crossed it off the list. The draw of Stow 'n Go was and continues to be very strong but I crossed off this gen off my list; we'd much prefer the updated 2008+ models, even if it meant a more basic model. We have to cross something off the list, as my wife pointed out!

Back to the Sienna. The wife hops in, the salesman tosses us the keys and away we go. She liked the power of the engine, the interior felt a tad more comfortable than the Ody, but the handling and steering was much softer. After a ten minute drive, she felt like she could get used to it and that the 2003-2010 second gen Sienna was definitely in the running.

So it was a successful fact-finding mission. I wanted to wash my hands with bleach after this particular little soiree but we added and subtracted from our list of desirable vehicles. Onward and upward!