Toyota Previa LE Minivan Road Test

From the September 1990 issue of Car and Driver.

Okay, sure. This is the most technically fascinating minivan extant, what with its twin-cam engine prostrate, heeled over at a radical 75-degree angle and situated about an inch below the walkway between the front seats. (Every time we ambled to the rear of the van, we’d get all adolescent: “Okay, here I go; right now I’m walking on top of the engine.”) But the wholly hidden four-cylinder powerplant isn’t what you notice when the Previa passes on the highway, is it? And the mid-engine layout isn’t what prompts neighbors to demand you turn off the lawnmower so they can ask about the vehicle parked in your driveway. No, sir. What they want to talk about is how neat this minivan looks. And what they want to hear is whether it works.

We have here a minor breakthrough in packaging. And the best part is that it’s okay to be all patriotic and teary-eyed, because the Toyota Previa was styled in America—well, at the CALTY design studio in California, which is pretty close to being in America.

With a drag coefficient of only 0.34, the Previa qualifies as aerodynamic. It has a steeply raked windshield, like GM’s APVs, yet the distance from the Toyota’s steering wheel to the base of its windshield is eight inches less wasteful. And the luscious jellybean curves are in such perfect proportion that the Previa looks like the smallest minivan on the market. It isn’t. In fact, it still swallows God knows how many of the obligatory four-by-eight-foot sheets of plywood. Or, with its bench seats locked in place, it accommodates seven adults—giving those folks in the middle seats, by the way, more than two inches more headroom than they’d enjoy in a Pontiac Trans Sport. Stand by while we wave the stars and stripes.

Climb inside and it gets even better. The Previa’s lovingly assembled interior stands as a high-water mark for minivan tastefulness and functionality. The A-pillars and their angled supports are expensively upholstered. The admittedly large dash—with a center bulge that makes it look pregnant—is finished in a brushed gray plastic that looks like titanium. The defroster outlets are so painstakingly countersunk and pressure-fitted into the dash that the two appear to have come from the same injection-molded piece. The backs of the door grab-bars are covered in a supple urethane that feels like ultrasuede. The retractors for both front seatbelts are hidden within flush, upholstered wall panels. The soft-drink holder, ashtray, and center storage bin (the latter a perfect place to hide a radar detector or eight stereo cassettes) are so cleverly integrated they’re almost hidden. All of the switch gear is up high, located where you expect to find it. (One of the benefits of the pregnant dash is that the radio and ventilation controls are thrust within ten inches of the right edge of the steering wheel.) And the sliding cargo door opens with less resistance than the passenger doors on many luxury cars.

There’s more. Get down on your hands and knees and you’ll notice that the upholstered left-side wall panel, a huge thing that runs from directly aft of the front seats all the way to the tailgate, is a single piece. So is the liftgate liner. So is the downy headliner. So is the carpet. Not only do these one-piece trim panels eliminate a lot of cutlines and visible fussiness in the interior, they also reduce the potential for rattles.

One of Toyota’s goals was to build “the sports car of minivans,” which is what motivated the company to pursue a mid-engine-rear-drive layout. That scheme lends the Previa a low center of gravity, reduces the polar moment of inertia, and distributes weight evenly. In theory, at least. When we parked our Previa LE on the scales, its weight distribution worked out to about 53/47 front/rear. That’s a good figure, but the front-engined Ford Aerostar and the rear-engined Volkswagen Vanagon are every bit as well balanced.

On the skidpad, the Previa doesn’t exactly wade into sports-car territory, clinging to Mother Earth with 0.70 g of grip. That’s not as much as is generated by either the Pontiac Trans Sport or the Mazda MPV, but perhaps the trade-off is ride comfort. The Previa jostles its occupants far less fervently than the Pontiac. Still, we wish the Toyota were fitted with fatter, lower-profile rubber.

And yet, on twisty two-lanes, this most modem of minivans does feel better-balanced and more agile than any of its competitors, save the Trans Sport. Behind the wheel, you detect no twitches that reveal whether this is a front- or rear-drive vehicle. The Previa tracks determinedly down the road, its path unaltered by scabrous pavement or truck ruts. It takes a confidence-inspiring set through corners, requiring a minimum of corrections. The steering, in fact, is the best of any minivan on the market: nicely weighted, eager to self-center, and almost perfectly linear.

Understeer appears earlier than we’d prefer. And although lateral body motions are satisfactorily damped, dive and squat are not. A sudden application of the brakes, for example, induces unnecessary forward pitching.

At the test track, our Previa required only 198 feet to bring itself to a halt from 70 mph. And it didn’t even have ABS. That’s very good stopping performance for a minivan.

The chief drawback to the mid-engine layout is that the cubbyhole for the powerplant is big enough to accommodate only a four-cylinder engine. Yes, Toyota’s 138-hp, sixteen-valve powerplant is a fine piece of work—or it would be fine if it were installed in, say, a Celica, where you could plumb its charms in the 4000-rpm-and-beyond range. But when you’re driving a minivan, what you want is plenty of torque at step-off, and the Previa simply can’t supply it. A foot-to-the-floor braketorque launch won’t even chirp the tires. The 0-to-60-mph sprint requires 12.2 seconds, which isn’t exactly disastrous; three of the Previa’s V-6-powered competitors make the same trek in the high eleven-second range. It’s just that the Toyota’s four-cylinder engine huffs and puffs and screams its guts out, making surprisingly raucous, unrefined noises in the process. Moreover, to keep the engine on the boil, the four-speed automatic kicks down at the slightest provocation and with more harshness than we have come to expect from Toyotas.

There are a couple of other detail imperfections that merit mention. The engine’s idle, for example, bogs and surges as the air-conditioner compressor kicks in and out. (As an aside, we discovered that, with the A/C running, a light application of the throttle induces an annoying whistle from a vacuum line. Toyota confirms an identical problem in about half of the Previas shipped to date, and dealers will reroute the line “for any owner who complains.”) And on its high-speed setting, the rear ventilation blower, mounted on the headliner just aft of the front seats, sounds like a Huey gunship on takeoff.

Counterpoints

The year 2000 is fast approaching, and Toyota is ready. The Previa is the best example of forward thinking in minivan design thus far. This package shows off a sleek and seductive skin, complemented by an amalgam of futuristic and exciting shapes inside. Sitting in the driver’s seat is like being on the bridge of the starship Enterprise. Although spartan, the instrument panel looks space-age; its sweeping and sculptured contours are very pleasing. And all of the Toyota’s panel textures feel good to the touch. The Previa is as capable as it looks. It has a good ride, predictable handling, and delicious steering. I would like it more if it had a larger, more powerful flat-six engine and a tachometer. But for now, the Previa is as good as minivans get. —Nicholas Bissoon-Dath

When I go vehicle hunting, two of my priorities are versatility and adaptability. I think the clever (but expensive) Previa meets these criteria better than any other minivan. And I would really like Toyota’s slick new people-and-stuff-mover if it weren’t for one glaring shortcoming of minivans in general: utter nerdiness. Some research supports my view. Chrysler, which sells the most minivans these days, says minivan buyers are more like owners of wood-sided, white-walled station wagons than any other shoppers.

One reason these buyers enjoy minivans is height—the vehicles are tall enough to provide a view over traffic. But once minivans and sport-utility vehicles pack our roads, nobody will be able to see over anybody. Already, from the seat of an MR2 you can’t see through the tinted windows of a Previa in front of you. And it’s going to get worse. My fear is as gripping as walking down the hall in high school beleaguered by seven-foot-tall chess club members all wearing pocket protectors. No doubt they arrived at school in Previas. —Phil Berg

I haven’t been this excited about a van since the original VW Microbus limped its way down the back roads of my anti-establishment consciousness more than twenty years ago. That old VW said “screw you” to everyone with conventional ideas about transportation, and the Previa does the same—albeit in a much friendlier way. Friendliness, in fact, is what the Previa is all about. From its friendly ladybug shape to its user-friendly space-pod control clusters, it carries out its mission of utility with consummate pleasantness. Toyota has made sure that passengers are well cared for and that cargo is swallowed whole—and that converting from people mover to cargo hauler is a nearly effortless task. All this and a thoroughly artful interior make the Previa a low-stress, high-pleasure transporter. The Previa demonstrates the kind of future-think that GM’s new minivan triplets hint at but can’t deliver. Toyota’s New Age design does more than just look good, it advances the minivan science to a new plane of . . . friendliness. As I used to say about the VW Bus: “It’s far out, man, far out.” —Rich Ceppos

90’s Pricing

Previas are available with more seating variations than Madison Square Garden: a base version with no rearmost bench seat, mid-line models with the twin-bench, seven-passenger layout (like the version tested here), and yet others with two swiveling captain’s chairs mounted amidships. The least expensive Previa is the manual-transmission Deluxe ($13,998), followed by the full-time four-wheel-drive Deluxe All-Trac ($16,608), the LE ($18,698), and the flagship LE All-Trac ($21,308).

The rear-drive LE model promises to become the best-selling Previa. Standard equipment is exhaustive. Were we ordering the vehicle for ourselves, the only options we’d specify would be ABS ($1130), power windows and mirrors ($380), and—forgive us for this, but we can’t help ourselves—the gargantuan power sunroof ($1370) above the middle seat. We usually sneer at sunroofs, but this one is a jewel, offering a 32-by-40- inch hole through which to study matters celestial. What’s more, Toyota adds 30mm of extra roof height to all sunroof-equipped Previas (Previi?), so that interior headroom is unmolested. Some folks really do sweat the details.

All of which brings the price of our wish-list Previa LE, including freight, to $21,843. That’s $2128 more than our “Best Buy” Mazda MPV V6 3.0i (C/D, May), a machine we still regard as the most versatile and carlike minivan on the planet. Of course, the Mazda MPV can’t compete with the Previa’s inspired styling, nor can it match the fit and finish of the Previa’s cockpit, which seems to have been hand-assembled by 30 or 40 Japanese craftsmen who have no regard for Toyota’s profits and have never punched a clock in their lives.

All that the Previa needs now is a six-cylinder engine. But unless somebody ships a load of acetylene torches to Toyota’s indefatigable product planners, that’s an improbable upgrade. Hold on. How much are acetylene torches?