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.

Venture is far more popular than Chevy's old "dustbuster" Lumina/APV minivan, but with calendar-2000 sales of some 97,500, it's no threat to Honda Odyssey, Ford Windstar and the Chrysler/Dodge models that all sell comfortably in six figures. One apparent handicap has been a relatively narrow body designed with one eye on the European market. That won't be a problem with the next-generation Venture, which is still set for 2004 as an exclusive North American product. Same goes for the related Pontiac Montana. Both will be visibly wider and doubtless longer than the current offerings.

Meantime, Venture will offer all-wheel drive as a first-time option for 2002. It's the same "Versatrak" system introduced with Pontiac's quasi-SUV Aztek and Buick's related 2002 Rendezvous. It normally drives the front wheels, but can direct power to one or both rear wheels as needed. Unlike rival setups, Versatrak is purely mechanical and doesn't steal space from the rear load area.