After a couple weeks spent talking about super-expensive cars, it’s time to look at a vehicle that is cheaper. A lot cheaper—and a little more, well, boring. A 1995 Plymouth Voyager SE sold this week for $3762. The vehicle is humble in origin and the price is dirt-cheap, but the fact that the van popped up on an enthusiast auction site, sharing webpage space with Porsches and BMWs and Corvettes, caught our attention.
Its presence raises some questions. Have the definitions of “classic” and “collectible” become so watered down that anything qualifies, as long as it’s old enough and has four wheels and an engine? Or do minivans, which took the auto industry by storm 40 years ago, deserve more credit? Perhaps it makes sense for a vehicle that’s big on nostalgia to wind up in the garage of an enthusiast, even if that vehicle is low on excitement.
Europeans will tell you the first minivan was the 1984 Renault Espace, but on this side of the pond and unveiled months earlier were the Dodge Caravan/Plymouth Voyager. They were a big deal, and Chrysler president Lee Iacocca really talked them up:
I predict the Voyager and Caravan will be to the ’80s what the Mustang was to the ’60s… As revolutionary as the Mustang? Now that’s a helluva strong statement. You know, the Mustang became both a sales legend and a classic car in its own time. But I feel that our minivan vehicles will do all of that, too—this design, frankly, is more revolutionary than the Mustang was …
Pretty bold stuff, Lee, but that’s not quite how people view these vehicles today. There aren’t Caravan posters hanging on anyone’s walls, and nobody’s paying top dollar for vintage Voyagers. Minivans are the butt of jokes and a symbol of the monotony of suburban life.
But Iacocca was right in one regard. Minivans were revolutionary. Their clever practicality is undeniable. A relatively small, transversely mounted engine with the drive wheels up front leaves oodles of interior space. Sliding doors make getting in and out a cinch, even in a tight parking space. The rear hatch made loading and unloading as easy as it would be in a station wagon, but with more vertical space.
In Chrysler’s case, ample K-car parts kept the price low, and the Caravan/Voyager twins sold 210,000 copies by the end of 1984, providing a financial windfall for a struggling Chrysler Corporation. Caravans, Voyagers, and minivans in general quickly became the people movers of choice and were such a big part of the American landscape that the first 1984 Plymouth Voyager ever built is now part of the National Historic Vehicle Register.
As for the one sold this week, it’s a 1995 SE with the larger 3.3-liter V-6, finished in red over gray cloth. It’s a California van from new and reportedly had one owner until last year. That’s impressive for a ’95 Porsche, let alone a ’95 Plymouth. The ’95 model year was also the last for the second generation Voyager that came out in 1991.
It shows 138,800 miles but looks a lot cleaner than that. The only real unanswered issue is the extent of the service history on the transmission, a known weak point. However, the fact that the van is this clean and preserved is impressive enough. Second-gen Caravans/Voyagers used to be all over the place but, like most family haulers, the countless school runs, road trips, potholes, and fast food wrappers killed the vast majority of them. This red one, then, must be one of the nicest Voyagers in the country.
For a certain type of person, like a millennial whose mom drove a Voyager or who had a hand-me-down Caravan as their first car, a clean 30-year-old minivan brings waves of nostalgia. The price is about as cheap as it gets, and we aren’t adding Plymouth Voyagers to our price guide or plotting their market trajectory any time soon, but plenty of old automobiles have been bought on nostalgia alone. For that reason, this bright red soccer-mom-mobile is as much a part of the old car hobby as anything.
