2001 Mercury Villager: Overview

Vehicle Highlights

Mercury's minivan shares its design with Nissan Quest. Both manufacturers have announced production will cease during 2002 model year. Villager comes in Base, Sport, and luxury Estate models. All have dual sliding rear doors, and seat seven; 2nd-row seating consists of a 2-person bench on Base models and a pair of bucket seats on Sport and Estate. Standard 3-passenger 3rd-row bench slides fore and aft on floor tracks. Side airbags and power doors are unavailable. A rear seat video entertainment system is optional on Villager and available at no extra charge on Quest. Villager's sole powerteam is a 3.3-liter V6 and automatic transmission. ABS is optional.

COMPETITION

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.