If you were born between 1985 and 2005, chances are you spent a solid portion of your childhood squished into the third row of a Dodge Caravan, eating Goldfish crackers off the floor mats. Back then, minivans were everywhere. Now, they’ve all but vanished. You can still spot the occasional minivan out on the road, but they’re a scare sight in today’s school drop-off lines, replaced by the pervasive SUV. So what happened to the quintessential family vehicle as we knew it? By the early 2000s, the minivan had hit its peak, but that peak was also the beginning of the end. While minivans were useful, they were never “cool” — even being dubbed “mom-mobiles.” The rise of the Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) didn’t help the minivan’s popularity. While the SUV was basically just a less practical, more expensive version of its older counterpart, there was a key difference in branding that brought in the consumer crowds. Suddenly, everyone wanted to embody that very SUV feeling of adventure, freedom and a less stuck-in-the-suburbs version of parenthood. The minivan made a brief comeback in 2023, but with fewer children to lug around, the demand for a vehicle that could accommodate a large family simply declined. Though the minivan might not dominate the family market anymore, the nail isn’t in the coffin quite yet. Millennials, once loyal city slickers, are slowly migrating to the suburbs. In fact, a Bank of America survey showed that around 45% of Millennials expect to buy a home in the suburbs, and what do the suburbs demand? A car with storage space that can handle Costco hauls and a whole lot of commuting. Perhaps it’s not surprising that there’s been a slight uptick in minivan sales in 2025.
