Cars in Real Life: Chrysler Town & Country Limited in Monterey

By Peter Viles, Los Angeles Times Senior Producer

My wife and I love to travel with our little kids, aged 4 years and 19 months, but it involves a lot of work. I'm sure we look a bit like the Beverly Hillbillies as we four stagger through airports with our car seats, portable crib, stroller, and various other duffels, suitcases and diaper bags stacked precariously in a sloppy pyramid on top of a luggage cart.

But this trip was different: after flying from LAX up to San Jose, we were picking up a fancy car -- a Chrysler Town & Country Limited minivan, our palace on wheels for a three-day vacation along California's Central Coast.  I had an unusual skip in my step as we made our way through the airport. My 4-year-old son spoke for his dad when he first saw the gleaming black minivan in an airport parking lot: "Wowww," he said slowly, with the kind of reverence others might use when they first set eyes on an ancient European cathedral.

Truthfully, I had a spousal agenda in agreeing to test-drive, and write about, the Town & Country. I've been trying to convince my wife Stacy that our next vehicle should be a minivan, that we should break down and join Minivan Nation. Perfect for ferrying kids to soccer practice! Trouble is, my wife is a fashion designer who views minivans as moving violations against style, the vehicular equivalent of high-waisted, pleated khakis. I was hoping on this trip to make her see it my way: that minivans are roomy, easy to load kids into and out of, and flat-out fun. And even kind of cool.

The Town & Country we loaded into was certainly cool. It was tricked out with so many electronic bells and whistles that it was a little intimidating to me and my wife -- we both drive pretty basic Toyotas, with dog-eared Thomas Guides as navigation systems. When I clicked the key twice to automatically slide open the side doors, and raise the back hatch, we both stood back just a bit and watched with wonder, like farm kids on our first trip to the big city.

The kids' car seats locked into second-row "Swivel 'n Go" bucket seats (they swivel!), and we soon fired up the DVD player (two screens!) and popped in my son's latest favorite, a movie featuring animated turtles. Our first attempt at using the navigation system was a small failure -- we did not know the exact street address of the chain restaurant where we were meeting friends for lunch, and we ended up guessing incorrectly from the list of Chevy's locations. We saw more of San Jose than we would have liked as we bumbled from the wrong Chevy's to the right one.

But our kids were drinking in a DVD and my wife and I were enjoying the smooth ride, the leather seats, and the generally swanky feeling of the fully loaded Town & Country Limited, a $40,000 vehicle. My next attempt at navigation -- to our hotel, 70 miles west in Pacific Grove -- was a success. As we motored toward the coast, my wife and I figured out the various electronic whizzygigs that I'm sure are second-nature to most Americans (electronic seat adjustment, dual climate control, satellite radio, etc.). I found the Town & Country's 4.0-liter, 6-cylinder engine plenty powerful, and the ride quite a bit smoother than my bumpy RAV4.  I wish I could tell you my son, who is a car nut, was happy with the ride too, but he was in a slack-jawed trance watching the turtle movie. He was lost to me.

Our traveling companions were two of my wife's high school classmates, one of whom brought along her husband and three children in a rented Dodge Caravan. Naturally the other husband, Patrick, gravitated to the more manly Town & Country, and by day two he had abandoned his wife and moved into the Chrysler, bringing along his two daughters and their car seats. Thus our vehicle became The Dad & Kid Chrysler Clubhouse of the Central California Coast.

It performed that role admirably as we saw the sights from Monterey to Carmel. Car seats snapped in and out easily, bigger kids scrambled happily back to the third row of seats. The navigation system delivered us to all the important places (the Monterey Bay Aquarium, 17-mile drive, a Safeway, a McDonald's). A steady stream of DVDs (Dora the Explorer, the Turtles, the BackYardigans) made it feel like Saturday morning all weekend long. To snap our kids out of their DVD coma, we switched to my wife's favorite CD mix of head-banging rock (Beastie Boys, Ramones, Queen), and the kids enjoyed that immensely. We were certain we were having more fun in the Clubhouse than the wives were having in the Dodge Caravan.

Patrick is a car afficianado and an engineer whose vehicles over the years have included a mint-condition vintage Mustang, a Porsche and a Land Rover.  This is a roundabout way of saying he knows more about cars than I do. He was generally pleased with the Town & Country, and paid it the highest compliment a guy can pay a vehicle: he chose to ride shotgun in the Clubhouse, rather than drive his own rental. He had a few nitpicks: he found the 6-speed automatic transmission a bit balky when it shifted from first to second. He also expressed a long-held frustration directed at automotive engineers: why can't they design rear seats that will accommodate a child's car seat but not leave an unsightly dent when the car seat is removed? Good question, I told him I would pass it along.

Driving a bigger vehicle takes some getting used to. I was thankful for the rear back-up camera, which helped me exit parking lots and spaces without too much anxiety. In the end I wasn't wild about the navigation system, though it generally got me from place to place. It started every search in Michigan -- even though the system knows within about 8 feet exactly where the car is at any given second. I found it annoying to keep changing the state from Michigan to California. I imagine I could have changed the "default" location to California, but isn't the computer smart enough to do that on its own? But overall, I was very happy with the Town & Country experience.

Parenthetically, I should add that the location of our trip, up and down the coast from Monterey Bay to Big Sur, is wildly beautiful. Every fifty feet you see a spot that looks like the backdrop for a car commercial. This is particularly true of 17-mile drive, which twists along the rocky coast from Pacific Grove to Pebble Beach, winding between stunning seaside homes and some of the prettiest links-style golf courses on the planet. I sat a little taller in the driver's seat knowing I was cruising along in the Chrysler Clubhouse.

When Patrick and his family headed home to Memphis on Sunday, he and his daughters moved out of the Clubhouse, making way for my wife, the minivan skeptic. We spent Sunday driving south on Highway 1 from Carmel towards Big Sur, another drive that could fill a coffee table book with beautiful vistas. I would like to tell you that the Town & Country won my wife over, but candor compels me to report otherwise. Here is the problem: the ride, she said was too smooth.

It's a bit more complicated than that. We stopped for a picnic lunch at Point Lobos State Reserve in Carmel, which modestly bills itself as "The Greatest Meeting of Land and Water in the World." For that special occasion, my wife and I swiveled the second-row seats around 180 degrees and installed the small plastic table that fits between the second and third row. The kids loved the idea of a picnic inside the Clubhouse, with the side doors open. We later had a second picnic in the car, in the sun-splashed parking lot of an In-N-Out Burger in Gilroy, California. Burgers and fries in the Clubhouse, it doesn't get any better.

In between picnics, my wife rode in back with the kids, in a swivel seat facing her son, and the back of the minivan. This seemed like a great idea -- Swivel 'n Go!  -- but it had its drawbacks. After a while, she got a little carsick, which she later attributed to two factors: she was facing backwards in the car, traveling down a winding highway, which can be disorienting; but also, she felt, the Town & Country ride was too smooth. Seems she is accustomed to the more grounded, bumpier ride of her Toyota, and she felt like she was floating in the Chrysler.

My son, on the other hand, eventually gave the Town & Country his highest rating, even after his mother put an end to the DVD marathon I had enabled. Budding engineer that he is, he did suggest some tweaks to the design -- he felt the second DVD screen was overkill, and could be removed to make room for a sunroof. But overall he loved the Clubhouse.  "Daddy," he announced as we zipped up the 101 towards San Jose on Sunday afternoon, "this car is better than both cars we have at home."

— Photos and post by Peter Viles
Producer's note: Our blog series, "Cars in Real Life," features real-life car reviews from L.A. Times staffers matched up with popular models.

Comments

[Patrick D.]

By far the best minivan on the market. Take away any bias and loyalty you have to any automaker for a minute and drive this vehicle. It is as impressive as any Honda or Toyota product which was rather surprising. Yes, Detroit, can still make a great product when motivated.

[slipstream]

I was always skeptical of the swivel seats for the reason you mentioned--carsickness traveling backwards. But it seems to be perfect for a picnic--makes the car that much more usable. Nice write-up.