Yahoo Autos Minivans Make Great Adventure Rigs
It will not look good on Instagram. It is not an effective mating call. And it certainly won’t get as far down the trail as a 4Runner. But if you want to do big, ambitious adventures on a budget, you can’t beat the humble minivan.
The three key factors for any adventure rig are capability, endurance, and reliability. Options that provide all four are popular and subsequently quite expensive. If you want a lightly used Tacoma, 4Runner, Ranger, GX460, or Land Cruiser, you’re going to be spending at least $35,000. Many of us, therefore, have to sacrifice one or more of these core factors.
One option is a two-door Wrangler. It’ll beat any pickup in terms of on-trail capability and should be reliable enough, but there’s a reason they aren’t the favorite for overlanding. With a relatively small cargo area and a droning, punishing highway experience, the Wrangler has neither the space nor road manners for long-term endurance. Older higher-mileage versions of the Tahoe, Land Cruiser, 4Runner, and GX all offer endless endurance, but unless you’re very experienced you don’t want to be 30 miles from pavement when your car decides not to start.
The point makes itself. What good is capability and reliability if you can’t bring the gear and people you need to have fun? What use is capability and space if you have to stay within range of a tow truck at all times? Lacking off-road capability limits you, but lacking confidence in your ride’s reliability stops the adventure before it starts.
The degree to which capability matters is also highly overblown. Adventures are about discovery and pushing your own limits, and over dozens of trips a less-capable car has never inhibited either goal. A less capable rig enhances an adventure.
Let’s start where I started, in the off-site parking of Seattle-Tacoma International airport, alongside my buddy Mark. Our plans were haphazard, sorted via text from my home in California and his in Boston. We had eight days of camping ahead of us, we didn’t have sites booked for four of those, we didn’t know whether we had two more people coming, and we had only what gear of mine could fit in a checked bag. There would be a music festival, and rafting, and dozens of miles of hikes before we returned to Seattle, at which point Mark would leave and I would drive down the entire West Coast in a car I hadn’t yet seen. It may not have been the Dakar, but it certainly had the ingredients of an adventure.
For shelter we had my beaten-up Coleman tent, two hammocks, and a 2022 Toyota Sienna hybrid. It did not have all-wheel drive, or the factory lift you’d get on a Woodland version, but it’d end up on the dirt anyway. Because last year, we had done a more luxe version of the same trip, in a $200,000 custom-built overlander that solved every problem for us. Over 2000 miles, we never once wondered if we could get there, or played around its edges, or dared to risk scratching it. This year we were doing it with simpler equipment, which meant we were going to push it harder.
The Sienna excelled. After we both got too tired to drive, we folded the third row, slid the (non-removable) second row forward, and stuffed our bags in the front. On a viciously empty section of the Idaho backwoods, where abandoned houses led right up to the national forest, we slept two people in reasonable comfort. Had it been cold, we could have idled the fuel-sipping Sienna all night, the engine kicking on and off when we needed extra heat.
