Five years ago, when our family needed a van to replace an '85 Voyager with tranny problems, we bought this current cornflower-blue, Plymouth Grand Voyager. I have been more than pleased with it. It has 6 cylinders, which give me plenty of power to jump into heavy traffic, lasting from 80,000 miles when I purchased the vehicle to today's 150,000 with very little shop time.

Today, she is still looking good and reliably gets me to work and back. Three things, however, have troubled the van in the past five years. 1st, the cylinders which hold up the lift gate are weaker than the door warrants. At $60 to $90 for parts alone, suffering with holding the door up myself seems to be a good option (replaced one of the two cylinders right after buying the van, but it only lasted about two years). I have walked by many a mini-van with the same character flaw in evidence. The second problem has been that both front axles have been replaced due to CV boot failure (it costs nearly as much to replace the CV-joint as to replace the whole axle $150-250 per axle). The third problem is that about 3 years ago, the power windows and doors died a slow death due to a breaking wire in the driver's side cable harness near the door hinge. This e-reviewer hasn't even priced the replacement/fix for that trouble since the windows are all up and the doors may be unlocked manually. Of these three problems, only one interfered with drive-train reliability. I can deal with that.

A couple of major pluses: ease of replacing the headlamps, air filter, and 1/2 of plugs easily accessible. OK, so those are not quite major plusses, but they are worth mentioning. ;)

For a family vehicle, it drives well. When the tires are not nearly bald (the current shameful condition your humbled narrator intends to remedy this week), the vehicle corners like many smaller cars. My girls and I like the fact that we are higher than many vehicles giving us great visibility. Even though the vehicle is not a 'commuter car' it is affordable to drive the American Highways on commuter basis. And yes, it has been tested on the open road. After a marathon 3 1/2 day trip from Indiana to Western Oregon, my family and I had no complaints about the comfort of the seats, or of a lack of leg-room.