I’ve been holding out for a first year 1984 version of Chrysler’s first generation minivan but finally realized it just will not appear until very soon after I publish this, a second year example, instead. Further, JPC’s recent Toyota Previa post and the multiple comments regarding how a minivan is bound to be filthy and disgusting in short order due to its occupants finally pushed me over the edge; even if I do find a 1984 one, it’s unlikely to be as clean as this one which I found among many, many newer vans with the same badging.
This one, finished in Mink Brown Pearl, is an SE version, which was the middle trim level of the Caravan version. The buyer clearly took everyone’s advice and skipped the first year of a new vehicle and got the second year instead after more than 200,000 buyers took the plunge the first year. There weren’t many changes after that first year and it does look like the van served him or her in very fine staid.
While the base version only came in a 5-passenger configuration as did the SE as standard, the SE was optionally available with the now-ubiquitous three rows, good for seven occupants. There was a front bench seat available to make that eight but that format was quite rare. In the short wheelbase format that was the only offering for the first few years, space was a bit tight but doable and certainly better than a regular wagon with a rear facing third row in the cargo area.
The third row with three seating positions can apparently also be removed and placed in the middle of the van in place of the second row to afford a huge cargo area. Remember though, back then the slider was only offered on one side, so Chrysler made the middle row offset a bit to one side, no walk-through captain’s chair option back then.
I was struck by how clean the seats were in this van, cleaner than most any other cloth-seated van I’ve ever seen (with the exception of one of the middle row seats), but just as striking to me was the lack of head restraints in not just the passenger rows but also the front seats. A little digging revealed that if you chose the vinyl interior (which was the option as opposed to this standard cloth), you DID get highback bucket seats in front but not when opting for cloth which is very peculiar.
Shoulder belts were not available for the second or third row either but did become available as a standalone part several years down the road that could be retrofitted. Yes, I know voluntary safety inclusions weren’t yet really on the radar in these days for many manufacturers but still, to offer a highback with head restraint in one seat material but not the other seems a trifle absurd.
The butterscotch color really warms this thing up and looks fairly inviting. The wheel and dash look very K-car (of course) but the seating position is high, there are fold-down arm rests and no center console to impede heading to the back for some quality time with the littles.
Perhaps 47,603 miles is the actual count, the overall condition certainly would agree with that. The instrumentation came in for applause from various magazines at the time, being clearly legible, attractive, and well laid out. While still a little sparse with some reminder of foregone options, this one at least looks moderately well filled out with only the bottom right position lacking a function bar the seatbelt reminder light.
Chrysler used a very similar stacked double front end on a few vehicles in this era, including the XJ Jeep Wagoneer. I can’t say I’m particularly a fan as it reminds me of the Griswold’s conveyance more than anything else. Sadly someone absconded with the hood ornament from this one but otherwise it’s still very complete. There aren’t too many of these around anymore for people to need parts from them, especially an early model where the part is likely older than the one needing replacement.
These minivans wouldn’t get a V6 for a few years and also had a turbo 4-cylinder as a stopgap measure before then (although both were offered concurrently in the end for a short while). So inline 4’s were the order of the day, I wonder which this one has…
I’m not a very good tease, so here it is, the venerable Mitsubishi 2.6l 4-cylinder! Offering 104hp and 142lb-ft of torque, this was the top engine, the base engine was Chrysler’s 2.2l. A manual transmission was only offered on the 2.2, so our Mitsu-unit equipped one has the optional 3-speed Torque-flite automatic unit by default.
From this angle, it’s evident how stubby these really were, with the third row there was little cargo area left. Going to the “Grand” extended version a few years later really supercharged sales and likely convinced a lot of people to trade their earlier small model in as well.
I can’t find any mention of Art Riffel Dodge in Loveland, Colorado so this may have been a one-owner van sold new there and perhaps living its whole life there with that owner, especially if the mileage is accurate. It’s not hard to see the attraction; interior space, good visibility, compact outside dimensions, decent economy, and fairly attractive or at least modern styling.
There isn’t much to add that hasn’t been said before here except that this one, bar a wash and wax and a fairly minor cleanout and vacuum, looks almost as good as new and likely to be the best condition one I’ll see outside of a museum for some time. The commercial above is extremely accurate as far as commercials go, the Chrysler minivans really were an automotive revolution.
Related Reading:
Curbside Classic: 1985 Dodge Caravan by Paul Niedermeyer
Cars Of A Lifetime: 1986 Dodge Caravan by 83LeBaron
CC Capsule: 1989 Dodge Caravan SE by Eric703
No modern automaker could ever admit to it, but being able to get up and switch seats in a moving vehicle was an extremely useful asset in our old Caravan.
Dad needs to go to the way-back and try to smoke out of the tiny motorized vent window right now or this road trip is OVER.
It’s hard to believe this design is 35 years old. It just looks timeless, but still contemporary, an impression helped by the color and modest trim of this example. I can’t imagine saying that about any 1949 car in 1984.
Wow! I bet you are right about the mileage being original. Little clues are sprinkled all around: the unusually clean upholstery, the original tailpipe, the intact presence of the chrome on the taillight lenses, the remaining presence of the chrome trim on the tailgate handle above the licence plate. This van reminds me of the nameshifting ’84 Chrysler trotted out (and I briefly drove) at the 25th Anniversary of the Minivan event at Wibdsor Assembly.
Lack of head restraints: yeah, because Chrysler certified these as “trucks” rather than passenger cars, and asleep-at-the-wheel NHTSA let them. Don’t recall the list of what other basic safety skimps this stunt allowed (maybe no side-impact intrusion guard beams) but it was more than just no head restraints. They did it again with the PT Cruiser (NHTSA said “tut tut, looks like rain” again), though by then head restraints were required even on trucks and “trucks”.
I especially noticed that chrome piece over the license plate. Those usually went missing early.
Lots of people likely thought that was a latch of some sort. Would have made sense, but it was a stationary panel and if locked had to be opened from a dash button inside. As it was, this panel got yanked on alot and some fell off.
Not so much a perceived latch as a perceived handle. Folks would unlock the tailgate and use that chrome plate as a handle to open the tailgate. It also did not help that the chrome plate was wider then the bracket that it was double sided taped to. So folks grabbed the bottom of the plate and if pulled hard enough, it came off. Ma Mopar did the same thing with the K car wagons. I love to know who was the “genius” that decided that double sided tape would be a great idea for that plate?
As I grew up with this van(there were loads of them in my area), a lot of folks drilled a few holes in the plate and bolted it to the bracket behind it.
Totally unconscionable for these to be classified as “trucks” to skimp on the most basic of safety features. Even more so as their targeted customers were young families with a bunch of kids. For the anti-regulation crowd, this is the kind of crap you get when business oversight is weak or non-existant. This was not NHTSA’s finest hour.
My father bought a mink brown Plymouth Voyager in 1984, so this car seems very familiar to me. I remember when he was shopping for it, he was adamant about getting the high-back seats (he ended up with an LE, which I was happy about because it avoided the dreaded vinyl upholstery). His also had the 2.6… it was a great van and served our family well for five years.
The day he bought it, dad did what you mentioned here… he removed the 2-passenger second-row seat, and put the 3-passenger third-row seat in its place. So we had a 5-passenger van with a big cargo area. The second-row seat resided in our basement for 5 years; it only made its way back into the car when he sold it.
And in doing some research, it looks like Art Riffel Dodge closed in 1987, so this car was among the last sold by that dealer (it was at the current location of T&T Tire on Lincoln Ave. in Loveland).
LE models (top line) had front headrests regardless of upholstery choice. Base models always lacked headrests. The mid-range SE had headrests only with vinyl upholstery. I believe you had to get a cloth-upholstery SE to get the full-width 3 across front seating which was rare. Also rare were the rear area seats that folded down into a bed. These were also subject to trim-level and wheelbase restrictions I can’t recall now, and thus also weren’t popular. The standard configuration on all of the early Chrysler minivans was two rows of seats, buckets up front, 3-wide bench in middle. The third row was an option, in which case the 3-wide bench moved to the back and a 2-wide bench went in the center, though all vans had the necessary slots to position either bench seat in the 2nd row position.
I remember going to look at the “Magic Wagons” with my dad around the same time too. Dad wanted a new family car to replace our troubled Farimont wagon, but he wasn’t impressed with these vans. He was skeptical of Chrysler reliability and requiring seating for six meant that there would be no cargo space left. In the end Dad passed on it and went with a traditional B-Body wagon.
In hindsight, while dad wasn’t being the most progressive at the time, that Pontiac wagon turned out to be an excellent car. Most of those early minivans seemed to have spotty records. These early stacked light versions left the roads quickly around my part of Ontario, despite being sold in large numbers. The later model first generation vans proved to be much more durable and stuck around on the roads for a long time, almost to the point of being cockroaches. So this junkyard find is really neat to see, as I haven’t seen one of this early Minivans in decades.
What impressed my father most about this Chrysler minivans was the space efficiency. He was never a big fan of large American cars, and drove a ’76 Buick Century wagon because with a young family he needed the hauling capacity… but he had no loyalty to wagons.
Dad drove very aggressively, and it’s amusing in hindsight that he drove a 104-hp automatic minivan for 5 years. I remember the sound of that engine straining under his lead foot, but I don’t recall any significant problems. He did, however, replace the tires and shocks immediately after he bought the car. And I remember thinking that his Eagle GT whitewalls didn’t exact match the aura of fake wood and wire wheel covers, though.
Seeing one of these quad-headlamp, inlaid taillamp, egg-crate grilled pre-facelift Caravans melts my heart! First generation Caravan/Voyager sightings are like a once or twice a year affair for me, and I haven’t seen a pre-1987 example in many years.
Chrysler really made it confusing with the array of available options on these, allowing it possible to end up with some weird builds like these. Note that this one also has power front windows, which in my experience were quite rarely selected.
The lack of front headrests with cloth seats and not vinyl in the SEs was always baffling to me. Especially because regardless of upholstery, base models didn’t receive head restraints at all and LEs featured high-back front buckets with either upholstery.
Wow, a time capsule indeed. But of all the old Grandpa cast-offs out there, is there anything lower on the want-list than one of these? Except for me, I mean.
I had forgotten that you could even get front seats without the headrests. 10 years after this I really wanted a Ram Wagon 2500 – the passenger version of the venerable Dodge B series van. Even by 1995 Chrysler still gave you no headrests on any of the back seats, and shoulder belts for only those sitting next to a drivers side window. So, for an 8 passenger van, up to 4 passengers would get the short straw and live with just the lap belt. I loved the no-nonsense vibe of the van, but that was one thing I just could not live with. Our Club Wagon had head restraints for all (the high-cushion folding rear seat was a kind-of headrest, at least) and a shoulder belt for everyone except the center rear passenger.
I have decided that there have always been 2 kinds of minivan buyers. Parents, whose
vans die fast, ugly deaths, and old couples, who maintain them as well as any Buick.
Unlike some of the junkyard cars we’ve seen on here, these vans kind of retro-cool nowadays in some crowds. I guess not enough to save it though.
A shame to see it in the junkyard in this condition. I’ve not seen one of these very early sealed-beam ones in many years, and certainly not in this good of shape for a very long time.
Going to assume that something with the 2.6L engine under the hood gave up… and the cost of repairing it was simply poor economics. Sadly, those engines were not the most durable out there. Amazing condition for a nearly 35 year old minivan though!
+1, or it was Grandpa that gave up and nobody wanted his old Caravan.
My brother (who has 7 children) had a couple of Caravans where he replaced the short middle seat with an additional back one. He could carry 8 and the kids had fun scaling the middle seat to get to the back.
I always wonder what put these clean vehicles with no apparent body or undercarriage damage into the boneyard, too. The 3-speed Torqueflite, even in FWD guise, still had a good reputation, so the best guess is something in the engine let go, but what could it have been?
My brother had an ’83 Caravan with the 2.6 liter engine. I recall he preemptively had the head gasket replaced.
Well the carbs were a nightmare and expensive back in the day. Then you had the “silent shaft” bearings that failed. That gave birth to the first balance shaft eliminator kits that became the standard. I wonder just how many of those engines are still out there as Mitsubishi designed them.
Limited crush space, one side exit door, no head restraints and no shoulder belts? Shall we assume no side door beams, and an easily opening rear door in a rear-ender? I assume it does great in a rollover as well.
Heck with the NHTSA goons. Don’t impede on my freedom to load the whole family into the death trap. Brake lights shouldn’t be mandatory either. Why should I have to shell out $2.00 for a no.1157 bulb just because other people can’t drive?
You mock, and I appreciate, but there are still those who sincerely put forth exactly that thoughtless opinion.
Ding! Ding! Ding! That 2.6 Mitsu engine had a carburetor that used a “vacuum depression chamber” somethingorother design and they goofed on the design of the head. They put a coolant passage next to the exaust valve so the temperature differential meant most all of them would crack the head and soon begin puffing steam from the tailpipe. The carburetor is a nightmare to get working correctly if it goes wrong, and documentation/parts are nonexistent out there.
“Sadly, those engines were not the most durable out there.”
We had an ’83 Dodge Aries with the 2.6 Mitsubishi motor (I assume the same one as this van) bought with 40k miles and it gave us zero problems for the additional 60k we put on the car before we sold it.
I still remember that dashboard from a ride I took in a brand new ‘84 Minivan – it’s funny I don’t recall anything else about it. The design was held up and aged well.
I blame the Reagan administration for the easing of NHTSA safety standards (or letting trucks continue to have fewer standards). At least the Chrysler Minivans were not rolling over like the 1984-90 Ford Bronco II.
I loved your write up, but the Jeep XJ Wagoneer was an AMC design and product, which is another design that has aged gracefully.
Your blame on the Reagan Administration is accurately placed, with plenty left over for abject maladministration of NHTSA by a series of agency directors over the years—not least Joan Claybrook, who squandered agency resources faffing around with stupid crap like banning speedometer calibrations over 85 mph.
It’s not as simple as that, though; the laws NHTSA implements are written such that regulated parties (i.e., the auto industry) have enormous power and an easy time to derail, delay, and drive up the cost of almost anything and everything NHTSA could possibly try to do. So you’ve got self-serving malfeasance from the industry side (if I start listing examples this comment will hit a length limit; pick up a copy of “The Ford Pinto Case”), and slow-as-molasses incompetence on the agency side, all smothered with a heavy coating of legislated preemptive sabotage. Whee!
To the point at hand: I can’t find a video (dammit), but here’s a description of the premiere of NBC’s “1986” news show, in which we find the following (emphasis added; Iacocca described this in one or another of his selfgratulatory books as an ambush or an attack or somesuch):
The second story, ″Safety Lost″ reported by [Connie] Chung, says that light trucks, which include pick-ups, vans and utility vehicles, may be dangerous to your health because they are not covered by the same federal safety standards that apply to passenger cars.
Chung explains that trucks have a higher center of gravity and turn over more easily than cars, and passengers are more vulnerable because the trucks don’t have headrests or steel reinforcement in the doors.
(…)
Chung interviews an engineer who wrote the first auto safety regulations in the 1960s. He says light trucks were ignored and the government never got back to them. There also are interviews with victims and their family members. Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca is interviewed and says that headrests and door beams aren’t that meaningful for safety. He doesn’t come off as well as he does on his own car ads.
NBC News spokesman Jim Boyle said Iacocca had turned down Chung’s request for an in-depth interview. But Chrysler officials said she could talk with him on the run when he made an appearance in Washington. Those comments appear on the program. Iacocca then asked for a longer one-on-one interview in his office, provided NBC wouldn’t use the first encounter, Boyle said. NBC refused.
“A little digging revealed that if you chose the vinyl interior (which was the option as opposed to this standard cloth), you DID get highback bucket seats in front but not when opting for cloth which is very peculiar.”
My parents had a 1984 Voyager with the vinyl interior, and it most definitely didn’t have head restraints in the front seats — I distinctly remember Dad complaining about the lack of them. I suppose it’s possible they introduced the highback bucket seats for 1985.
On a completely different note, while watching Young Sheldon (which is set circa 1989) the other day I couldn’t help but notice a distinct lack of minivans in the street scenes. It’s almost all full sized sedans, station wagons, and pickups. In the mid to late 80s minivans were the hot new thing for family transportation. Surely there would have been some on the road, even in Texas where the show is set. I’m guessing the producers just aren’t able to find any clean first generation examples to use.
Depending on what trim level it was, it was possible to have low-back vinyl front buckets without head restraints. From the brochure image I posted in my comment above, at least for 1984, the base models all had low-back buckets regardless of upholstery. Chrysler could be so strange.
That makes total sense. I’m almost certain my parents’ van was a base model. They went with a pretty cheap configuration — the five passenger seating, 2.2L engine (Dad often complained about the lack of power as well, and how he should have ordered the bigger engine), manual windows and locks, basic radio, base wheel covers. I think about the only options they did get were the automatic transmission and air conditioning, and I guess the vinyl upholstery (which I never realized was optional until now).
Had an ’88 SWB Caravan SE, a hand-me-down from my parents when one of my cars died. 2.5L NA/auto. My parents didn’t get the concept of maintenance or even washing a car. It ran and drove well, required little, didn’t rust and still looked good right up to the end in 2004, when the head gasket let go for the 2nd time on I-95 in RI. I really miss that van, it was endlessly versatile for me. Wish the featured one was for sale, I would give it a good home.
This one is probably in the yard due to the 2.6L engine. The rear balance shaft was usually starved for oil and would seize up. I know because that’s what happened to my 86 of the same color and interior combo.
Good thing I’m not close to Colo, otherwise I’d be tempted to go and get this one.
I vaguely recall reading that those balance shafts didn’t make much difference and there was a way (maybe a kit?) to remove them, thereby making the 2.6L engines a bit more long-lived.
There was a kit to remove the balance shafts the machine shop recommended so I tried it. You couldn’t tell the difference in vibration levels. The Mikuni carb was another bad feature. Could never figure out how to adjust it properly.
Mitsubishi 2.6 issues: Oil pump, timing chains, balance shaft/oil pump chain a single-row, valve guides & seals, head gasket, carburetor. Some gave good service, not all.
Looks very clean. Look at the plastic covering the speedometer, it looks only a couple of years old, maybe.
My 87 Voyager was the same interior colour as this one. I love the manual door lock buttons, shown as black in this one. Mine had manual windows, not power. Another favourite feature on mine was the rotating knobs in the ceiling to permit winding open the rear vent windows. I still wish my SUV had that.
The wheels on this one look to be 15″ to my eyes on the PC screen. Certainly too small, another inch would have made a difference in handling. Mine had the 3.0 engine.
Enjoyed the photos!
Another genuinely amazing find! I like this interior. Unfortunate, the exterior is such a forgettable colour.
A cost-cutting trend many manufacturers adopted in the late70s/early 80s, was cloth faced seating with vinyl seat sides and backs. So many interiors from this era would have looked immensely more inviting if the full seats were cloth covered.
How strange about those front seats. That just goes to show the difference between different countries’ approaches to road safety. Head restraints had been required by law in Australia since the early seventies (1972?), and seeing an eighties vehicle without them just looks wrong. Providing them with one upholstery choice but not another is just plain weird.
“Head restraints had been required by law in Australia since the early seventies”
The US mandated them in passenger cars beginning in 1969. Trucks were exempt – because they were commercial vehicles. The regulations took awhile to catch up with Real Life as more people started driving trucks for personal transportation. The Chrysler minivans may have been the first really blatant exploitation of that regulatory gap, and it wasn’t long before truck standards were increased (though still below cars of the same year).
Seeing this still relatively pristine example (albeit headed for the crusher) really shows off so many of the elements that made these so popular. While I agree with the comments on the glaring absence of head restraints, overall the interior was very well executed. I remember the Mopar wide-wale corduroy seats from the 1980s, and they were remarkable in helping make the car feel a bit more upscale (especially compared to some of the “mouse fur” velours offered by competitors at the time). The dash was well laid out with pretty comprehensive instrumentation, and the seat configurations as well as other thoughtful features sealed the deal for many buyers, including people who would have likely gravitated to imported products. Plus the minivans were manageably sized and pretty fuel efficient, making them super easy-to-use for their intended slow-speed, functional duties. Power and size were added through the years, but the core mission of the Mopar minivans never really wavered. No small accomplishment, and it’s little wonder that Chrysler has dominated the (now shrinking) market ever since.
You are right about all of that. I remember watching in astonishment as fashionable people I knew began buying them. These were people who would never have bought anything from Chrysler a decade earlier, but here they were lapping these things up, and as something trendy, no less. Until the Ford Explorer came along in 1990 these were what all the hot moms in suburbia were driving.
Alright, that’s it—I’m going back to university and starting a bad college band called “Hot Moms in Suburbia”.
My first car was a hand me down 85 Reliant SE with the mitsu 2.6. It gave me 3 reliable years and got me through college. The 2.6 was a torquey but gas guzzing motor that eventually gave up the ghost when the nylin timing chain guides wore out.
The V6 option came out for 1987. A few years before the turbo 4 was offered.
Yep a mitsubishi v6. Funny thing is they kept it as an option till 99 or 2000 long after they released their 3.3 and 3.8. I never understood why they kept it on the options list for so long. An i4 three 6 cylinders two wheelbases, all sold umder 3 brands… the configurations for chrysler minivans were pretty crazy by then but it was great for the consumer.
They used it in so many vehicles and kept it so long because (1) they didn’t have a smaller V6 of their own, and (2) they had a contract with Mitsu to buy a lot of 6G72 3.0 V6 engines.
I’m not impressed Chrysler would dare not include a basic safety feature most buyers in the US and Canada would have taken for granted a decade earlier.
Especially on a popular, high profile product targeted at families. The optics are terrible.
Auto execs/turds would say,
“Oh, we never meant for FAMILIES to go back there. This is a mere truck! Those seats are for cushioning your tool boxes, and the three or four cinder blocks it could carry before the springs give out, or fly at your head because you have no headrests. C.B.A., bee-aaches! Now let’s take off our skinny ties and go back to snorting coke of this dead hooker!”
Well, they might not say that exactly. They don’t say anything exactly. That’s what they have lawyers for. Surely all the soccer moms would educate themselves on the engineering and crashworthiness and the regulatory standards of their new car, I mean “truck” before purchasing. Everyone does that.
And now the news:
You know, freedom, blah blah blah, Kardashians, blah blah blah, sports, new Blazer looks like a hernia with wheels, blah blah blah, market upswing.
My friend had an ’89, and it snapped a halfshaft because he dared to turn the wheel AND floor it to merge with traffic. All that 90-something raging horsepower was too much for the poor “truck” to handle. You wanna do crazy things like that you need an F350. It did have 75,000 miles on it, though, and that is way beyond the expected K-car ownership experience, so you take your chances I guess.
At least it’s tough, no doubt has strong bumpers. Sike! Not a car, don’t need bumpers, either.
No moderation in this comment. Hope I don’t get banned…
🇺🇸
It’s the fact the *front* seats don’t appear to have them either, that I was questioning. That’s the shocker. 🙂
Where do you keep finding these gems, Jim? Every time I go to the wrecker, things have been quite pilfered already.
I agree with some of the comments here that it is likely that this pristine example went to the scrapyard because it was probably someone’s grandparents’ vehicle and nobody wanted to actually drive it. Admittedly, it would be pretty uncool…..when I think of it, the last remaining examples that I can remember around here either are old people’s transportation, or maybe a metalhead/ slacker type dude who has a really rusted out one with band stickers all over the back (when you think about it, the metalhead/ slacker transportation could probably refer to a good portion of cheap basic transportation for the dirt poor that is nearing the end of its lifespan).
As a matter of fact, last week I’d seen someone driving a pretty well preserved example, and sure enough……grandpa was behind the wheel mouth agape and squinting to see the road and driving 50 in a 70 zone. So much for stereotypes! Gotta love it.
I had a friend who bought one of these in 85 or so, and I remember being very impressed by the spaciousness and the apparent quality. A big step up from the K-cars I thought.
Regarding this one going to the boneyard in this condition, I have had some experience in wakening a ‘sleeping beauty’ like this, and it can be surprisingly expensive. With such low mileage, I would believe that this van hasn’t turned a wheel in well more than 10 years; it’s just been sitting stationary in grandma’s garage. Well…. let’s talk about what you need to do to get it back on the road. First let’s do the obvious: a set of tires. Then every radiator hose and every belt must be replaced. All this stuff has dry-rotted too far to trust. Then come the brakes. Not just pads and rotors but calipers, a new master, and a front/rear bias valve as every piece of the system has rusted solid because brake fluid is hydrophilic. Oh, but not the brake hoses; they just dry rotted like the rest of the rubber. Better grease the axle bearings while the rotors are off. Shocks and ball joints are probably okay for a year or two, but check them while you’re in there.
Now, let’s cautiously look at the engine. First a new battery. Ideally a radiator flush and refill will be enough, and an oil and filter change along with a transmission fluid flush. While you’re having the radiator flushed, drop the gas tank and have that flushed and coated or you are going to need a weekly supply of fuel filters. Next we very carefully replace all those dry-rotted vacuum hoses, and hope that the carb is not all varnished up. Good luck finding somebody who remembers these carbs, is in your area, and is willing/kind enough/dumb enough to try sorting it out for you.
Now that it’s running you will probably find that all the seals dried out and it’s weeping oil everywhere, but hey – no big deal….unless the head gasket is among those compromised. These engines were fairly notorious for failing head gaskets, and consequent warped heads.
Now, if you’ve gotten this far you can go ahead and buy a battery.
Shazam! And after all that, what have we got? An old mini-van in which all the plastic pieces will start to crumble after a year in the sun.
I haven’t bothered to add up all these costs, but since the min-van has no desirability as a collectible, it’s value is probably $1500 max to a sucker if you can find one and will drop to zero the minute it needs another repair.
Or, you could buy a used Hyundai and be ahead with none of the hassle.
So, so so so true. Grandma’s ’82 Pontiac 6000 LE two door practically followed your description. Light Rosewood metallic (almost peach), reddish velour interior. Looked immaculate inside and out. Washed regularily, and waxed at least twice a year by me. But Grandma rarely drove anywhere outside of church, the grocery store, or bridge club. Only 41,000 miles in 16 years, and in the last two she had it, anything rubber mechanically related would fail. The repairs weren’t cheap. Finally one day, she had it, and bought an (you guessed it) Accord in 1998. 7,000 miles on that one when she passed on driving further in 2007. That one’s battery would die religiously due to never getting charged by sitting. She showed me the newspaper ad the Honda dealer put out (remember those) after she traded it in. $3,900 for an immaculate one owner car. I pity whoever bought it, I highly doubt that ended well.
Ha ha, when you put it that way, it definitely seems to be the reason why this is in the scrapyard……its non-usage actually made it more of a liability than light usage would have (1-3 days a week). Kind of like muscles–after a while of not using them, they will atrophy to the point where it weakens someone far worse than if they’d maintained lighter, but regular usage.
I’d wager that someone tried to sell this and couldn’t find a buyer. It is the fate that a vehicle suffers for being basic transportation.
Cars like these are like Lawrence Welk records. They can be brand new in the plastic but,… nobody wants them.
A great retro Motorweek clip of their testing of the ’84 Plymouth Voyager/Dodge Caravan.
Love it! I was in third grade when these came out, and I remember misreading as “CARVAN” the nameplate on the Dodge model a friend’s folks bought. Made sense to me; it was kind of a car and kind of a van.
My mom specifically didn’t buy a ChryCo minivan during the first gen bc of how close the rear seats were so close to the rear window. Scared the piss out of her. We wound up with a Chevy B-body wagon in 1985, followed by a Camry in 1988.
My FIL had one of these we borrowed frequently when our kids were little. It was a two tone Plymouth Voyager, with the Mitsu 2.6. We could get six people into the thing easily, but trips to the North Georgia mountains could be rather slow.
My brother had a succession of these Mopar vans; I seem to remember all of them were blue. He was pretty jazzed when he finally got one of the Grand Caravans, as he was a Scoutmaster and they did a lot of camping and such.
At a recent family gathering, my nieces and nephews were discussing their newfound minivan love. I got the impression that they felt they were supposed to be a little embarrassed to express this feeling; like they were giving up their “man card” by trading their CUVs for Odysseys…
They were quite surprised when they found out their uncle still daily drives a minivan. As much of a motorhead that I am, I still find the van a great daily driver and the Swiss Army Knife of almost anything I need to do. Other than lap the racetrack…
Wow! Even the rear-most side windows could be opened on these! I believe Chrysler still has this feature on the Grand Caravan & I can’t think of any other vans that do. Having no headrests on even the front-most seats seems a little strange. The Ford Aerostar had them from day one, but unless you also got captain’s chairs in the 2nd row, NONE of the rear seats ever got them. It’s understandable that the 8-seat Caravans & Voyagers were rare when you only had 4-cylinder power. I don’t believe any Grand Caravans or Voyagers had the original quad-headlight front end; the facelift must have occurred in 1987 (when THOSE models were introduced). The interior DOES look pretty inviting; the blue ’95 Caravan I saw at Pull-a-Part was in almost as good a condition as this one. ONE quirk about the exterior design on these though: why was the sliding door handle turned sideways as opposed to the other doors?
The side door handle is vertical because you need a vertical grip to pull the door open. Seems to me the front door handles could probably have been vertical, too, and remained at least as easily usable for pulling the doors open. So why not indeed? Inertial factors (they’ve always been horizontal on swinging doors…) affecting cost of doing something different (…and therefore all the linkages and such are already designed, tooled, and available immediately…) driving the cost-effectiveness calculations (…and they’d spend more to retool for vertical door handles than they’d make in increased sales by having them). The vans would’ve looked a little tidier with vertical front door handles, but I doubt if anyone ever refused to buy one on account of horizontal front and vertical side door handles.