Want a new minivan - reliability issues???

[mieuxmew]

I want to buy a minivan. We have 2 kids (both 7 years old). Our family car is a 2005 Honda Pilot EX-L with 95,000 miles on it. Extended warrantee now expired, but we have had no serious issues (bought it new). It fits our needs 85% of the time. Can only really fit 4 people, as the 3rd row seat eliminates ANY trunk space. Plus the third row is impossible to get to, especially my elderly parents. We can't take any of our kids friends anywhere. When we go on vacation, the suitcases fit, but not much room to spare. We are driving to Hilton Head this summer for vacation and a minivan would sure be nice!
Hard part is the car is paid for and it is nice not to have a car payment and in winter the SUV is better in the snow (we live in NJ so fortunately not too much snow here).

What minivan do you recommend? Honda Oddessy is top ranked by Consumer Reports, but no minivan is recommended due to reliability issues. Anyone have issues with their minivans?? Will look at Toyota Sienna, but it seems pricier.
I have a "deal" for a 2012 Oddessy EX-L for $31,000 (MSRP $35K), but have not done any serious negotiating yet.

Any advice? Buy or not buy and if buy, which one??
Thanks!

 

[chipanddalemom]

I have a Sienna and love it!!! No problems at all so far and it was well worth every penny.

 

[100AcreWood]

I have a Sienna and while I love it so far (had it for two years) I would never own a mini van unless I needed one. We have three kids but if I could drive an SUV I would do that. I had one but when our 3rd was almost 2 driving anywhere became difficult with all three crammed in the backseat. They wouldn't keep their hands off each other. The SUV was easy to drive, so is the Sienna. But the Sienna parks like a bus.

Good luck with your decision!

 

[HillPete]

I have a 2002 Honda Odyssey that is in near-perfect condition. The only real problem I have had was when the first battery died (after about 6 years). We replaced it with a piece of junk that only lasted 2 1/2 years, so that's on us, not Honda. It has a few bumps and dings on the outside and the leather is getting old, but it's a 10 year old car! It's been paid off for 6 years and I plan to keep it until it dies around me. Doesn't look like that's going to be anytime soon!

I've heard similar stories about the Sienna, but they weren't as competitive with Honda in 2002 as they are now. That's the only reason we didn't go with the Toyota. Either one will probably last you at least a decade.

Good luck!
--H

 

[java]

We just bought another Chrysler T&C touringL. The price was right having all the bells and whistles that I have become used to. This is our third one. We just traded in our last one at 150,000 miles and the transmission was going. We are comfortable with that. We drive cars to their death. If I was a trader inner ever couple years I would have gone Honda because they really hold their value!

That consumer reports was driving me crazy. They liked the Honda Pilot, except for the 2010 which is the used I wanted. Then they recommend the Sienna but if you read it, they really don't like it with the changes made to it.


We had it down to the three, odyssey,sienna and T&C. It came down to price. The odyssey was $4000 more with less features for us. And I am a sucker for stow and go.

 

[debelfish]

I have a 2007 honda odyssey and love it. It is my second one (I traded in and 04 for 07 for back seat airbags). I haven't had any trouble with it, other than maintence. What I would suggest is rent a van for your vacation this year and see if it is worth paying $30,000 for a bit more room.

My twins are 13 now but when another adult gets in the car they have to go to the 3rd row.
Good Luck,
Elizabeth

 

[Gumbo4x4]

Plus the third row is impossible to get to, especially my elderly parents.

When we haul our parents in our SUV, we kick the kids to the 3rd row

Honestly, even the largest minivans don't have a ton of space behind the 3rd row when it's not folded flat. More than your Pilot, yes. Enough that 6 or 7 people and all their luggage would fit inside? No way. You'd need a rooftop carrier just like you would with your current car. I say since your car is reliable & paid for, maybe just hang in there a couple years and see if you can make it work. It's already working 85% of the time, maybe that other 15% wouldn't be THAT much better in a minivan anyway.

 

[sahmoftwo]

I have a 2008 Honda Odyssey and we also love it. No problems to speak of and we were just rear-ended by a drunk driver and we had very very minor damage which was amazing since she had a large truck with a steel bumper! We love to take road trips in it since there is plenty of room for everyone and lots of room for luggage. It's also nice b/c my parents can sit comfortably in the back seat when we need to have everyone in the car at the same time.

 

[PrincessMickey]

I don't have a mini van but I test drove several when I was looking for a new car. If I were to buy one I was going to go with the Sienna, it has an AWD option.

 

[java]

I don't have a mini van but I test drove several when I was looking for a new car. If I were to buy one I was going to go with the Sienna, it has an AWD option.

Actually I don't think they make the AWD option anymore. I was told that it proved less safe for minivans for some reason? Maybe the size of the car?

Another thing we thought about is that every car we see is a Sienna or an Honda- we didn't want to look like every other car in the lot. Silly but just another thing we thought about after going insane reading reviews on Consumer reports and edmunds.

 

[justakrazymom]

When we haul our parents in our SUV, we kick the kids to the 3rd row

Honestly, even the largest minivans don't have a ton of space behind the 3rd row when it's not folded flat. More than your Pilot, yes. Enough that 6 or 7 people and all their luggage would fit inside? No way. You'd need a rooftop carrier just like you would with your current car. I say since your car is reliable & paid for, maybe just hang in there a couple years and see if you can make it work. It's already working 85% of the time, maybe that other 15% wouldn't be THAT much better in a minivan anyway.

My caravan def has enough space for 6/7 plus luggage.. We have a 2011 Caravan krew with stow n go and I adore it. More than enough room for everything. We had 2 Kia Sedona's before and loved them but went with the dodge because we had no Kia dealer here when it was time to get a new van last year.

 

[justakrazymom]

When we haul our parents in our SUV, we kick the kids to the 3rd row

Honestly, even the largest minivans don't have a ton of space behind the 3rd row when it's not folded flat. More than your Pilot, yes. Enough that 6 or 7 people and all their luggage would fit inside? No way. You'd need a rooftop carrier just like you would with your current car. I say since your car is reliable & paid for, maybe just hang in there a couple years and see if you can make it work. It's already working 85% of the time, maybe that other 15% wouldn't be THAT much better in a minivan anyway.

My caravan def has enough space for 6/7 plus luggage.. We have a 2011 Caravan crew with stow n go and I adore it. More than enough room for everything. We had 2 Kia Sedona's before and loved them but went with the dodge because we had no Kia dealer here when it was time to get a new van last year.

 

[MSLRAC]

My caravan def has enough space for 6/7 plus luggage.. We have a 2011 Caravan krew with stow n go and I adore it. More than enough room for everything. We had 2 Kia Sedona's before and loved them but went with the dodge because we had no Kia dealer here when it was time to get a new van last year.

We have an 08 Grand Caravan with stow n go and we are getting ready to trade it for a large SUV (Suburban or Yukon XL) because travel is miserable for just the 5 of us in the van. No matter how we configure the seats, the kid's knees or feet are hitting the seats in front of them and it is impossible to get a weeks worth of luggage and a single stroller in it without a roof top luggage carrier. And just in general, it is very hard for DD7 or an adult to get in and out of the 3rd row. Before deciding on an SUV, we looked at other vans and newer Dodges but it was the same in all of them.

So OP, I would really investigate whether a van is the right choice for you because things might not get much better going from a Pilot to a van.

 

[yoopermom]

I have family members that own one of each .

My DSM, who is super picky, only buys the "best of the best", bought the Toyota last year because she likes top of the line finishes and reliability. She also hauls a lot of elderly relatives, and so did not want the stow and go seats since she had them before and felt that they weren't as comfortable as the regular ones. She has neutral leather seats that are beautiful and don't "show" anything.

My DM has a seven year old Honda that has not required a lot of maintenance, and has held up well, but has a lot of control panel "issues" IMHO that aren't intuitive (makes me feel stupid that I STILL can't totally figure out the heat/ac or radio!). I can't tell you totally why she and I don't like it, but we don't .

My DC just bought a 2011 T+C which I rode in extensively over Easter. She got the stow and gos, because she has two teens with lots of "stuff" and wanted the flexibility. I know it doesn't score as high in reliability, but I thought the controls were "pretty" and easy to use. She has black fabric on the seats, which is already annoying with kids, as you can imagine. One odd thing is that it has the storage units for the built in DVD units, but doesn't have them, so it's kind of a waste of space overhead down the middle.

NONE have a huge amount of storage for "stuff" once you have six people in their, that's for sure. For that you would need a large SUV, I would think...

Terri

 

[crjack]

I recently traded my 2000 Honday Odyssey for a new Honda Pilot. I had 0 issues with my minivan the entire time I owned it and I bought it new because it was impossible to get a used one back then.

There are times when I really miss the seating configuration of my van, even though my kids are both teens.

One thing to consider if you go with the Odyssey is the Honda dealer will probably give you a good trade on your pilot. My van had low miles for it's age and had never been in an accident but I was still surprised at how much they gave us and we negotiated the price of the Pilot first.

I know both Honda & Toyota hold their value and I think you will be happy with either's minivan.

Best of luck.

 

[dclfun]

I have to drive a minivan from my power wheelchair, meaning that the driver's side seat is removed. I LOVE my Toyota Sienna. I could have bought a Chrysler for much less $$ but I've had three of them in the past and they fell apart in one way or another w/in two years. I've had the Toyota for two years and other than having to replace the auxbat for my adaptive equipment it has been running smoothly. The interior is very quiet, especially for a lowered floor van and the ride is comfortable, esp. as compared to the Chrysler.

 

[pwdebbie]

My son sells used cars and I've had him watching for a crossover for me. He called me last month about a 2006 Honda Odyssey w/60,000 miles (we never buy new) and wondered if I was interested. Having driven them before, I know they are comfortable to drive. But we are empty-nesters and don't really need the space. We gave it a month, told our other kids about it, and they didn't jump on it, so we decided to buy it. Traded in dh's Subaru Legacy that he got from his dad when he died (so a little emotional there), then dh took my Toyota 4Runner (we want to keep a 4WD since we live in the mountains), and on Wednesday we picked up our new-to-us Odyssey.

I did a good bit of research and found glowing reviews from everyone. It is a basic model, no bells and whistles, but it will serve us well beyond our needs. And with nine grandchildren, I'm sure we will be toting around some of them once in a while. In fact, if one of our dds finds themselves having to buy another van, we will make this available to them and then look at something else for ourselves, but that's another year down the road since they've already spent their tax refunds. LOL.

Tomorrow was the day we were supposed to hit the road for WDW (trip planned since 2009, 35th anniversary) but since the high-maintenance dog hasn't yet died, we had to cancel our trip. I wish I could be on the road to Florida in that van tomorrow.

 

[letsgoreds]

0 issues with our 2007 Oddy...just replaced the tires at 75K miles. I haven't heard of minivans having reliability issues, strange. I would also look at the Sienna, I wanted a black van, and at the time Oddy was the only one.

My sister recently purchased the Ford Flex and it is pretty darn cool. Might be worth checking out. I was planning on getting either a Mazda CX9 or GMC Acadia...but wasn't impressed with the ride. Drove the Oddy just for comparison, and liked it more.

I STRONGLY suggest an email/fax blast of your closest 10 dealerships, outlining exactly what you want (color, model, etc), when you want to buy it (2 day window) and ask them to send you their best deal. We paid $4K less for the same van (EX-L) than some good friends who just walked in and negotiated (same month).

It used to be that you could ask for the 'fleet salesman' since they can typically get the lower price because they deal in bulk, but I think our last purchase landed us more with the salesman responsible for the email offers.

 

[shortbun]

I LOVE my Odyssey BUT...they're putting some of them out with these 'run flat' tires now and those tires are a huge pain in the patoot. They cost almost $400 each to replace, you can ONLY get them from Honda and not every Honda dealer is set up to service them. Luckily, we have been in town both times we've had to replace one so only had to go to the dealer. We now need to replace two due to wear-front wheel drive being the beast on tires that it is-and I told DH to replace all four with normal tires and get a small 50mile spare as the well for the small spare is still there and empty. The kit for replacing the wheels, gives you the spare wheel and tires but after spending $1700+ for the kit and another $600 on tires...I'm rethinking the 'get me some regular tires' idea. Not all Odysseys have the 'run flats.' Ask. They are sucky.

 

[MSLRAC]

I LOVE my Odyssey BUT...they're putting some of them out with these 'run flat' tires now and those tires are a huge pain in the patoot. They cost almost $400 each to replace, you can ONLY get them from Honda and not every Honda dealer is set up to service them. Luckily, we have been in town both times we've had to replace one so only had to go to the dealer. We now need to replace two due to wear-front wheel drive being the beast on tires that it is-and I told DH to replace all four with normal tires and get a small 50mile spare as the well for the small spare is still there and empty. The kit for replacing the wheels, gives you the spare wheel and tires but after spending $1700+ for the kit and another $600 on tires...I'm rethinking the 'get me some regular tires' idea. Not all Odysseys have the 'run flats.' Ask. They are sucky.

I thought that Honda stopped the run flats on the Odyssey as of the 2010 model year after a lawsuit from unhappy owners.