Minivans Are Becoming Properly Quick; Thank Modest Power Increases and Major Transmission Changes

Minivans. They’re the ultimate family haulers: unpretentious, utilitarian, and usually ugly.

Minivans haven’t been slow in some time. A decade ago, the Honda Odyssey produced 244 horsepower and required fewer than nine seconds to accelerate from nought to 60 miles per hour, hardly the behavior of a contemporaneous Chevrolet Aveo.

But the rate at which minivans have been packing on the ponies and adding gear ratios has evolved quickly over the last year. The Chrysler Pacifica came first, producing horsepower similar to its Pentastar twin from Dodge but adding a handful of gears. 0-60 times dropped to 7.3 seconds.

That was nothing to sneeze at. At least until Toyota made the 2017 Sienna the most powerful van in the segment and linked its 3.5-liter V6 to an eight-speed automatic; at least until Honda launched the 2018 Honda Odyssey with 10 speeds and 280 horsepower. Now the numbers are staggering.

Let’s be honest: 0-60 times aren’t everything. Indeed, they’re not even half of everything. You don’t take your seat at the local pub, slap your keys down on the table, and begin reciting the specs of your minivan purchase (up to and including its Nürburgring lap time).

Besides, the rolling start times conducted by Car and Driver, from 5 to 60 miles per hour, will likely give you a better comparative sense of what vehicles actually feel like when accelerating.

But in relative terms, when comparing the minivans of today both with one another and with their predecessors, it’s not difficult to ascertain that these eight-seat, front-wheel-drive people carriers possess the kind of power that’ll embarrass many a previously quick car.

Car and Driver says the 2017 Sienna Limited, with 296 horsepower, rockets out of the gate and hits 60 mph in 6.9 seconds — a tick quicker than the equivalent all-wheel-drive model.

The new Honda Odyssey Elite, with 18 fewer horses than the Sienna but with a 10-speed automatic that’s reserved for higher Odyssey trims, is even quicker. 60 mph comes up in 6.6 seconds. Meanwhile, higher speed acceleration — from 50-70 mph — works even more obviously in the Odyssey’s favor, as the Honda’s overtaking prowess reveals a 4.1-second time. That’s more than a second quicker than every van aside from the Kia Sedona SXL, which does the deed in 5.0 seconds.

To the casual observer, these times are meaningless. Indeed, the times themselves lack real meaning. Few people are performing off-the-line stunts on the way to drop the kids off at gymnastics practice. But those of us who enjoy our minivans, particularly those of us who live on rural roads choked by tourists all summer long, take a measure of solace in speed.

Of course this level of accelerative ability is entirely unnecessary. But unnecessary power needn’t be reserved only for unnecessary cars.

[Images: Honda, FCA, Toyota]

Timothy Cain is a contributing analyst at The Truth About Cars and Autofocus.ca and the founder and former editor of GoodCarBadCar.net. Follow on Twitter @timcaincars.