A shocking number of marriages end in divorce. Once inseparable, loving couples can drift apart with time and age. Such has been the case in Automobile Magazine's long-running but recently estranged partnership with the Chrysler minivan. Back in 1986, a first-generation Dodge Caravan served ably as one of our first Four Seasons vehicles, and for about ten years thereafter, Chrysler's minivan was one of our perennial favorites. It won nearly every comparison we threw at it and was sure to be mentioned any time we put together a list of cars we loved. In naming it to our first group of All-Stars, we concluded, "No one else, here or abroad, has built a minivan that looks, feels, behaves, or speaks to the prospective customer the way Chrysler's minivan does."
Times change. Only one full-time staff member from those days remains - editor-in-chief Jean Jennings - and Chrysler has long since gained stiff competition from both well-thought-out minivans and hip crossovers. As such, our relationship, once close and congenial, has grown increasingly distant. We haven't given the Chrysler minivans an All-Star award since their ninth in 1998 (the second-generation Honda Odyssey came out the next year and went on to become a repeat winner).... Read full article