2008 Chrysler Town & Country Touring

When Chrysler first introduced its family of minivans in the 1980s, it was truly the revolution of the box.

Since then, the last two generations were sleek, almost sexy, continually upping the ante in feature content and car-like driving dynamics.

With the latest version, however, the company has returned to its roots: the new Dodge Grand Caravan and Chrysler Town & Country are boxy once again.

They are, however, a lot more versatile, offering a multitude of seating configurations that were unheard of back in the 1980s.

Which seating configuration you choose largely depends on the configuration of your family. My loaded-up Town & Country tester was fitted with the optional Swivel 'N Go seats, which are two very substantial (100-plus pound) seats that can face forward or backward.

While not that easy to switch around – you have to move the front seats all the way forward first – they are bigger and more comfortable seats, when facing forward, than their Stow 'N Go counterparts, which can be dropped into the floor at the flip of a couple of levers.

Swivel them to face rearwards, taking the seatbelts and all requisite safety gear with them, and you're left with a living room that four kids could happily call home.

When facing back, the Swivel 'N Go seats don't offer enough legroom for adults to face each other, but there's more than enough room for young feet; you can also install a handy activity table, which hides under the floor when not in use.

This level of seating versatility is what sets the new Chrysler vans apart from their competition. No other minivan, import or domestic, offers the ability for rear passengers to face each other and none offer the under-floor storage that comes standard in the Chryslers regardless of seating configuration.

Other vans, however, offer easier ways to reconfigure the positions they do offer: stowing the third row of the Chrysler, for instance, requires pulling on various straps and levers, none of which are very elegantly presented; swiveling the second-row seats can only (in theory) be done by folding them first; un-swiveling them requires you to reach across the seats into the middle of the van to reach the folding lever.

On balance, I think that I prefer the standard Stow 'N Go seats, myself. They're a lot nicer than the old Stow 'N Go seats, with bigger frames and more comfortable bolstering, plus they give the new Chrysler van a lot more versatility.

If, for instance, you find yourself needing to haul away some really large object from the antiques market, you can simply throw the seats into the floor, turning the Town & Country into a luxurious cargo van.

Seats up, it's as nice as minivans come, with leather and alcantara on the seats, individual armrests, rear-seat audio controls and other goodies. And, as childhood experience has taught me many times over, facing forward on long drives is far more preferable to looking back for stomachs that are sensitive to motion sickness.

Not that, given the way it drives, the Town & Country is a vehicle that's going to induce it. This is a real smoothie of a van. Its 4.0 L engine whispers except when you're using full throttle, at which point it emits a refined snarl; the six-speed automatic transmission snaps off barely-perceptible shifts.

Road and wind noise are near-nonexistent at highway speeds. The ride is excellent, smoothing out the biggest bumps without verging into floatiness; it's soft, but, behind a three-spoke steering wheel that delivers a good sense of the road surface, you always feel in control.

Handling, while by no means sporty, is impressively stable and composed for a seven-passenger vehicle, with good grip levels and not too much body roll.

Only the brakes really disappoint: the pedal feels dead during the initial stages of travel and there's never quite as much stopping power as you're hoping for.

Refinement is the name of the game here; something that's echoed in the interior trimmings.

My tester's two-tone dashboard was trimmed with a convincing combination of wood and metal finishes, neither of which were ultimately real. Still, the overall design of the Town & Country's interior is very upscale, with chrome-ringed instruments (with Chrysler's trademark Indiglo backlighting), a logically-arranged centre stack topped by an analogue clock, power-assisted front seats and leather on the steering wheel and sprout-from-the-dash shift knob.

The overall level of quality is very impressive, which makes the flimsy modular centre console stand out all the more: can this rattly, ill-fitting contraption have been signed off on by the same people who demanded the solid, matte-finish dashboard?

Special mention here must go to Chrysler's excellent MyGig infotainment system, which combines navigation, audio, telephone and other functions into one easy-to-use touch screen installed at the top of the dashboard. Not only can you do the usual browsing of radio stations (including Sirius satellite frequencies), but an on-board hard drive allows you to record songs from discs or the radio.

There's a USB port to allow you to download photos to the hard drive, letting you display (presumably) family photos on the dashboard. Many of the functions are also available with voice commands; the hands-free phone system works particularly well.

The Town & Country is a surprisingly thirsty beast. While my test period did, admittedly, consist almost entirely of urban driving, the 14.4 L/100 km I averaged was still surprisingly high. Credit or blame, I guess, must go to the gutsy large-displacement engine.

Perhaps Chrysler should consider employing its Multi-Displacement System from its Hemi V8s here too; Honda offers a similar system called Variable Cylinder Management on the Odyssey that runs its V6 on three cylinders while cruising.

Chrysler does offer other powertrain combinations, depending on which model of minivan you choose (there's a Dodge version as well, remember); consider carefully if running costs are a major concern for you.

Is the new Chrysler van a revolution on the same scale as the original? Of course not. Despite the exit of several competitors – GM no longer does minivans, or does Ford – this is still a fiercely competitive and innovative market.

Interiors that can be rearranged in every which way and seats that fold into the floor are no longer the novelties they once were. Where the new Chrysler vans do stand out, though, is in the vast array of configurations available.

While import makes typically offer just one powertrain choice, you can get a 3.8 L V6 or a 4.0 L in the Town & Country, while the Dodge version also offers a flex-fuel 3.3 L with a four-speed automatic. Then there are all the trim combinations and options, which let you build exactly the family hauler you need and want.

The new Chrysler vans may not be revolutionary, but they're still right up there with the best.

"The report of my death was an exaggeration," Mark Twain once wrote, a quote that could easily be applied to the minivan.

It almost seemed on its way out, with many buyers going to SUVs and then crossovers, and some manufacturers, such as Ford, stopped selling them altogether.

But Chrysler says the minivan is alive and well – third in sales only to compact cars and pickup trucks. To that end, there are all-new versions of the Dodge Grand Caravan and Chrysler Town & Country for 2008.

If it seems counterproductive to offer both, it's mostly because of U.S. marketing. Dealerships generally sell one or the other there, and trim levels overlap.

In Canada, where you'll find all at one store, the Grand Caravan ranges from $26,495 to $30,495, while the Town & Country is the next step up, at $35,995 for my Touring tester, to $42,895 for the Limited.

Incentives announced this week have reduced those prices, depending on the package you choose.

The Grand Caravan's base engine is a 3.3 L V6, with four-speed automatic, and can be optioned to a 3.8 L V6 with a six-speed automatic in the SXT trim level.

The Town & Country Touring uses the 3.8 L exclusively, while the Limited steps up to a 4.0 L V6.

The nose-to-tail redesign comes in one length only. The short-wheelbase model, which made up half the company's Canadian sales – but only one-quarter of U.S. purchases – has been discontinued.

That's a decision made in Michigan, and time will tell if it will be detrimental here, especially since GM seemed poised to retire from the segment but has instead retained both short- and long-wheelbase versions of its Chevrolet Uplander and Pontiac Montana SV6 for 2008. It's the only company offering a short-wheelbase this year.

Chrysler's official answer is that customers bought the "shorty" for its price, not its length, and is making up for that by packing the entry-level Grand Caravan Canada Value Package with anti-lock brakes, electronic stability program, a/c, curtain airbags, power windows and keyless entry, at a base price that's $3,460 below the last-generation Grand Caravan's MSRP.

It's also the least-expensive of the long-wheelbase competitors, and $2,105 more than the short-wheelbase Chevrolet Uplander, which is similarly equipped but without curtain airbags.

When compared to the competition, Chrysler's engines come up short: the 175 hp 3.3 L and the 197 hp 3.8 L are the least powerful in the segment, against a low of 235 hp in the Nissan Quest, and a high of 266 horses in the Toyota Sienna.

But Chrysler's 3.8 L and 4.0 L engines are mated to a segment-exclusive six-speed automatic, and while you might want more grunt when taking seven passengers up a hill, the extra gears make for very smooth and pleasant performance overall.

Inside, both Caravan and T&C are considerably better than their predecessors, although there's still room for improvement: a trough where the centre stack meets the dash panel is going to collect dirt and be difficult to clean, and some of the plastics feel cheap, especially the hard silver stuff on my tester's steering wheel.

The cluster is straightforward in daylight, but at night, I found the green gauges hard to see, needing a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to them.

Chrysler has the competitive edge in seating, first with its exclusive YES Essentials fabric, on all but the Canada Value (where it's optional) and the leather-clad T&C Limited. It's stain- and odour-resistant, and as easy to clean as leather, without the cost or the too-hot, too-cold feeling I dislike about cowhide.

The other ace is Stow 'n Go, also exclusive, which lets you reconfigure the seating without removing the second row. The seats fold into bins in the floor. Tumble the third row, and you've got 244 cm of flat floor, enough to bring home eight-foot boards and shut the liftgate.

Every model has covered floor bins. They can be used for storage on the Canada Value, which has only removable second-row seats, and on vans equipped with Swivel 'n Go, the spinning chair system that I don't like since the swivel seats can't be folded into the floor.

I'd take the Chrysler model based on Stow 'n Go alone, since it can be instantly changed anywhere, allowing me to haul an unwieldy purchase or pick up extra passengers mid-trip, without wishing I'd either left or not left my second row at home. Be warned, though: the seats have thinner foam so they'll fold properly, and they get hard very fast.

My tester was equipped with a $2,400 entertainment group, which outfitted it better than my house: a hard-drive-based MyGIG stereo and twin rear-seat video screens capable of playing two separate movies or games simultaneously.

I have difficulty figuring out new electronic devices, and without the owner's manual, I found MyGIG was beyond me. But its touch screen is very simple, and I was able to download music and photos into it easily, from CDs and a USB memory stick.

When the van's in Park, the front screen will also play movies; the picture disappears in any other gear, but the sound continues. In Reverse, it's a backup camera.

Parents will appreciate the T&C's "halo" lighting, an attractive ceiling-mounted glow that's just bright enough for checking on sleeping passengers without waking them, and the myriad of cupholders and cubbies, including a huge double glovebox.

For all the ink that crossovers and SUVs get, there are still seven carmakers in the minivan market, and since they're not sold on sex appeal, it comes down to features and price, to the customer's benefit.

Honda and Toyota offer more powerful engines than Chrysler's two base powerplants; Toyota has the only all-wheel-drive version; and Kia, Hyundai and GM have longer warranties. Chrysler counters with value pricing and a superbly configured interior. Let the shopping begin.