40th anniversary for revolutionary Chrysler minivan

by David Burrell  Twenty years after Lee Iacocca, stepped up the microphone and introduced the Ford Mustang, he was again standing in fron...

by David Burrell 

Twenty years after Lee Iacocca, stepped up the microphone and introduced the Ford Mustang, he was again standing in front of a large crowd to make an important announcement about a break-through automobile.

Back in April, 1964 Iacocca was the boss of Ford.

Now he was Chairman of the Board of Chrysler.

And the automobile he was revealing was his company’s 1984 range of mini vans: Plymouth Voyager and Dodge Caravan.

A luxury Chrysler version would soon follow.

To the assembled group of media, he proclaimed:

“I predict it will be to the ‘80s what the Mustang was to the 60s”.

And he was right.

Lee Iaccoca announces the mini van

 

The Plymouth/Dodge/Chrysler mini-van, and its imitators, would lead a revolution.

With high riding seats, plenty of room and comfort for growing families, the mini-van led to the SUV.

It heralded the global rotation out of sedans and station wagons.

I know that there is a debate which says the VW Kombi was the first mini-van, but it was always a commercial vehicle which morphed into a sort-of people carrier.

Same with the 1949 DKW Schnellaster vans.

No doubt about it, Chrysler was the first to popularise a car-like van that fitted easily into a suburban garage and was aimed at replacing the station wagon.

In so many ways, the mini saved Chrysler financially.

No other car company in the USA had a front-wheel drive van which was as easy to drive as a car.

It was the right vehicle at the right time.

Chrysler had the market to itself.

All those baby boomers who had bought Mustangs were now married with children.

Not wanting to be seen in a station wagon, the car of their parents and their childhood, they flocked to the minivan.

The minivan was a long-held dream of Iacocca and his long time off-sider, Hal Sperlich.

It was Sperlich who made the Mustang possible when he devised a way to use the Ford Falcon underpinnings and wrap it in svelte sheet metal.

Sperlich also wrote the submissions to the Ford Board that argued the business case for the Mustang.

But when he came to argue the case for a “garageable van” as he called it, his wise counsel was ignored by Henry Ford II.

No matter how hard Sperlich tried, he could not convince HFII of its merits.

In fact, he made his argument so often and with such passion that he annoyed HFII and was fired.

So over to Chrysler he went with Iacocca’s blessing.

It was there that Sperlich worked on the front-wheel drive K-car.

When Iacocca arrived, work was restarted on the minivan idea, using the K-car as a foundation.

Chrysler was also lucky with its minivan.

Only months after its announcement, Renault launched a similar vehicle, the Espace.

And in one of those supreme automotive ironies, the concept of the Espace was originally proposed in the early 1970s at Chrysler’s UK subsidiary.

When Chrysler UK was sold to Peugeot/Citroen, the Espace idea went too.

More mergers and take overs saw it land at Renault.

Such is luck.

David Burrell is the editor of retroautos

Voyager interior

Plymouth Voyager production line

1984 Plymouth Voyager

1984 Plymouth Voyager

Dodge Caravan

Caravan advert

Voyager interior

 

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