Featured GCR Best Car To Buy 2018 Winner: Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid

I have been asking Toyota for this at every car show in Southern California since I got my 2007 Prius. Especially after they came out with the Highlander Hybrid! It seems the drive train would drop right in. No? With their head start I can NOT believe they let Chrysler beat them to the punch. Now that my wife has passed away, I no longer need a minivan... so Chrysler is too late too.

 

best car to buy, until the next recall... probably more reliable than a bmw though.

 

In total fairness, the gen4 had a major recall that slowed sales its first year two, and Chrysler owners are as satisfied with the car as Tesla and Porsche ones. Though that does still puzzle me.
The Caravans we have at work seem to be fairly solid cars.

 

I am sure the recall affected sales. Last year when I looked at the 2017 Prius, my local dealer could not do a test drive due to the recall. They also said they had a Prius they had sold but could not deliver until the recall was done.

By the time my preferred dealer got my car in stock, there were no more issues.

 

agreed, toyota quality has been lacking of late, and i'm still remembering the nineties with chrysler, but i can't get beyond my demons, i doubt i could go back.

 

No manufacturer will be free of problems, and the chance of issues goes up with any first year of a new model or redesign. Best that they admit it when there is a problem and fix it.

 

i think that's why there are so many recalls these days.

 

When I first started asking, it was just a hybrid. I finally got tired of waiting for them and bought my wife a regular 2011 Sienna. Plug-in would have been even better though.

 

As for the question- why not Sienna? Don't forget Chrysler sort of accidentally already had an existing body/frame design with huge spaces for the hybrid system (from the stow and go seat design). This reminds me of our gripe with Prime, why didn't Toyota design a frame just for Prime to hide the HV battery better? Just because it's easy for us to envision a new frame/body design apparently does not mean it is easy to do from economic and plant scheduling basis...at least Toyota anyways is slow at it. I waited 3 years for Camry hybrid before I got the Prius, and that was something they already planned to do.

I have a regular 2009 Chrysler minivan (VW variant known as Routan) and it has huge storage spaces where the battery would go in the PHEV. So that is frame design existng for many years.

 

A Sienna hybrid is possible in the future. In the past, it was too big. The hybrid minivans Toyota offers in Japan are smaller than American models.

The Highlanderh was a poor seller until recently. For the price, the MPG gains weren't spectacular. Most of those for which the cost wasn't an issue opted for the RXh. The same price to improvement ratio would likely have kept sales low for a Sienna minivan, and there is no Lexus sibling help support it. This last year, the Highlanderh was offered in a lower priced trim, and sales improved. With the improvements Toyota has made in cost and efficiency, a hybrid Sienna might be possible now. Assuming Toyota doesn't just cancel it; I think this generation is going into its 9th model year.

 

I posted pictures of the underside of the battery in the Prime and there is almost 4" of unobstructed space beneath the battery already! I you want, remove the well in front of the hatch latch (where the lug wrench is stored). Then you can stick a camera down there to get an unobstructed view of all the empty space down there. Almost ALL of what we gave up in the trunk!

 

I LOVE the notion of the plugin minivan ... and LOVE all the EV miles the Pacifica gets. But there's mixed feeling now that FIAT (fix it again, Tony) is the parent company ? ... kinda creepy.
.

 

really? i was under the impression that they were an upgrade.

 

ok if you say so .....


yikes!
linked to the jalopnik site for the pic & got 4 pages of code ...
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I read that as Cerberus LOL

 

I just learned that was wrong from this.

 

Considering the issues @bisco had earlier perhaps I was not wrong.