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Old 01-20-2021, 06:24 PM   #5504
Calamity Jesus
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Member#: 44501
Join Date: Oct 2003
Chapter/Region: NWIC
Location: Yeah, well, you know
Vehicle:
that 's, like, your
alternate facts, man.

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Hot take: The Previa egg was the worst of the Toyota vans.

Looked and sounded cool on paper, but failed at being a van in nearly every other way that mattered.

Technically it was a unibody, but it was a unibody that very closely mimicked a body-on-frame with huge frame rails running down both sides. They made for an unreasonably high floor so that the engine hump under the front seats was barely a hump at all. This meant there was very little leg room for any of the rear seat passengers, and the engine hump meant that folks with long torsos like me had their scalps in the headliner when driving. The engine's location didn't really help much with handling since the rest of the vehicle drove like a truck with a high CoG, and it didn't provide much power at all, particularly not in the naturally aspirated AWD version my GF's family had.. so it's biggest contribution to the experience was interior engine noise.

At the time, the several-year-old van looked way better than most of the contemporary competition from Ford, Chevy, and Chrysler because it wasn't (like them) made out of school glue and sawdust. Honda's Odyssey was still just a frumpy 5-door station wagon, remember. Once enough people had waxed the unpainted bumpers and smashed them up in fender benders, they started looking just as junky as the rest of the minivans. I don't see any appeal today.
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