2015 Toyota Sienna AWD Drive - Three Mans And A Van

* A cautionary tale.

Traversing the great state of Wyoming with hundreds of pounds of men, gear (including a Chairman Mao stencil) and snacks needs no fewer than 14 cupholders.

(Two cupholders were used for drinks, the rest were used for toy cars and various empty wrappers.)

Building a family car isn’t a trick. Rather, it’s a compromise between size and economy, comfort and capability, familiar and futuristic. Anyone can build a battleship, but moving it down the road at 25 miles per gallon requires some finesse.

This isn’t a story about the Littoral combat ship. Instead, it’s a story about three overweight men, eight hours to wonder aloud in a van in Wyoming about Nixon, road noise and absolutely no legal marijuana from Colorado crossing interstate lines. (Sorry to get your hopes up.)

The 2015 Toyota Sienna is a minivan with complex roots. Not necessarily a $45 billion Department of Defense bungle like the USS Independence, the Toyota Sienna benefits from some thoughtful, inexpensive touches, such as storage everywhere and comfortable seating — but ultimately falls short.

The Sienna has some seriously tough competitors. All six minivans left in the U.S. (the Mazda5 is sadly gone) — the Dodge Grand Caravan, Chrysler Town & Country, Kia Sedona Honda Odyssey, Nissan Quest and Toyota Sienna — are hopelessly close to $30,000 when equipped sanely. Our tester, an opulently equipped Limited AWD edition tipped the scales at over $44,000 with expendable options such as remote start ($499) and roof racks ($185). A good example can be had for much less.

Exterior

“Well, it’s no Honda Odyssey,” I continuously said through our run.

Partially because I wished it had central vac like an Odyssey for the filthy animals I was hauling 550 miles across Wyoming, but also because I believe the Odyssey makes good with the van’s limited palette.

With long sliding doors, maximized interior room and boxy proportions, vans have a tough time looking good. As a result, the Sienna is best eaten face-first.

The creased hood, grille and attractive headlights are somewhat let down by the plain jane bumper and nondescript shoulders. It’s hard to fault a van for being boring — but somehow the Sienna is and the Odyssey just isn’t.

Around back, the Sienna has one.

Interior

The Sienna makes its hay in slogs like these — same goes for a lot of the other minivans — and that’s why they’re likeable.

Like other minivans, the Sienna tickles the common-sense quotient with a handful of Toyota features that range in usability.

Space shuttle seating — which may be the thinnest corporate tie-in imaginable for Toyota — helps the van seat 7 or 8 passengers depending on seat configuration. When the middle row has captain chairs only, seating for adults in that row is comfortable and spacious (I fit two adults in the second row for more than 1,200 miles). In the more expensive Limited models, second-row chairs have leg support.

However, when the middle seat isn’t installed in the second row, there are a few ungainly hooks jutting up from the floor that remind you that something isn’t there. They’re also a little bit of a tripping hazard for small feet.

The much more useful family feature, an amplified voice system for drivers to speak to rear passengers, dubbed “Driver Easy Speak” is the Sienna’s best trick. Using a microphone in the front to project through the rear speakers, talking to children sitting in the rear seats is much easier and clearer — and more importantly — safer.

Day in, day out, the Sienna is just as comfortable as a living room. The easy load height and wide-open spaces made trips to the racetrack and back easy, and around town the Sienna is competent and quiet, which was ideal.

Infotainment

Syncing a phone with the system and utilizing its data connection helps the van find movie times, gas pumps and stream Internet radio, which I imagine actually gets used in a van more than it does in their passenger cars.

(My only gripe: the USB port appears to be only .5 amps, which means my toast-sized iPhone Plus couldn’t charge or run off the single USB. I had to plug in a power inverter to one of the 12-volt adapters and noisily run a power inverter. That’s a big problem for families, and something that could have been wrong in my car only. I asked Toyota for some guidance, but haven’t heard back.)

Drive

The mileage isn’t impressive, nor is the trade-off for all-wheel drive. Our all-wheel drive machine hummed away for 1,200 miles through Wyoming, Colorado and Utah over three days, which proved to be long enough to say repeatedly, “I thought it would be quieter in here.”

The Sienna could benefit from more forward cogs, and two fewer drive wheels. (The rear floor was strangely hot after a long drive — hot enough to melt a box of chocolate bars in the back.

The Sienna is interesting like my living room too, and I’m no one’s interior decorator. Despite subtle improvements to the front fascia and rear taillights, the Sienna doesn’t look as good as, say, the Odyssey, inside and out.

But like most family events — or hauling adults and gear hundreds of miles across the country — it’s not how you look doing it, it’s how it gets done.

And it wasn’t pretty. The men, I mean.

Correction: An earlier version of this story didn’t include the Nissan Quest as on sale in the U.S.