Though the competition has heated up, we feel that the new Dodge Caravan is still one of the best minivans you can buy. It offers all of the creature comforts in a pleasing package at a fair price. Our other Best Buy is the Honda Odyssey. It's a little bit smaller than the Dodge, but more sporty to drive, and it has a super-convenient flip-and-fold-away rear seat.

Trailing at a close second are the Recommended Chevy Venture, Ford Windstar, and Toyota Sienna. Though these vans are comparably priced and offer loads of neat features, we feel they can't match the road manners of our two Best Buys. Also garnering Recommended ratings are the Chrysler Town & Country and Chrysler Voyager. Though they are mechanically similar to the class-leading Caravan, they don't offer the breadth of model choices.

Astro and sister Safari have seen no fundamental change since their 1986-model debut, making this one of the oldest designs on the market. General Motors hangs on to them for the modest but fairly consistent number of buyers who prefer the greater towing capacity of a rear-drive body-on-frame minivan versus a front-drive unibody design. However, one well placed source says GM is committed to Astro/Safari only through 2003, after which they would be dropped if sales don't hold up to profitable levels.

So the question is, how many sales does GM need to justify keeping these minivans, let alone redesigning them? Only the bean-counters know the answer. For the record, though, Astro calendar-2000 sales were off 10 percent from '99 to about 92,500. Safari managed a slight year-to-year gain, but still does only about a third of Astro's volume.