Mocked as uncool, the minivan rises again

DETROIT — Could driving a minivan, the ultimate embodiment of the suburban family vehicle, ever be considered cool?

The automakers are trying mightily to persuade us.

In marketing campaigns featuring heavy-metal theme songs, rapping parents, secret agents in cat masks, pyrotechnics and even Godzilla, minivan makers are trying to recast the much-ridiculed kidmobile as something that parents can be proud — or at least unashamed — of driving.

Toyota led the effort early this year with a campaign for its Sienna model that features a self-indulgent couple rapping about rolling through the cul-de-sacs with their posse of kids in their "Swagger Wagon."

"The stories we heard were, 'I just don't want to be seen in a minivan. I don't like being the soccer-mom joke or feeling like I've given up all trace of my identity to be a parent,'" said Richard Bame, Toyota's national marketing manager for trucks and minivans.

Other automakers have jumped on the theme, too. For example, in a series of ads that began this fall, Honda claims its 2011 Odyssey "beckons like no van before." One spot deploys a song by the metal rockers Judas Priest to awe a grocery-toting dad with the van's capabilities. In another, a couple seeking a romantic night out finds an Odyssey with rose petals spilling out of the sliding doors, chocolate-covered strawberries in a cooler compartment and a fire crackling on the rear-seat video screen.

Chrysler, which invented minivans in 1983, plans to offer a high-powered version of its 2011 Dodge Grand Caravan, aimed at dads, which it has nicknamed the "man van."

And Ford Motor Co., which stopped making minivans in 2006, is jumping back into the game with the diminutive C-Max. The seven-passenger vehicle is about two feet shorter than the Odyssey and Sienna and offers high-tech features like sensors that allow drivers to open the rear liftgate simply by waving their leg under the bumper.

Ford calls the C-Max a compact "people mover" and hopes its European design will make the vehicle practical for families without the unflattering "minivan" label. "Many are hard-pressed to notice it has sliding doors. That wasn't by accident," said Ford spokesman Said Deep.