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 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.

Quest and sister Mercury Villager became lame ducks with the announced early end of the Nissan/Ford minivan joint venture. However, after doing without minivan for about a year, Nissan will reportedly introduce a new Quest in late 2003 as a 2004 entry. It's apparently being designed on the new Altima car platform to deliver a sportier driving feel, but it's also likely to be larger than the outgoing Quest, which we and others often criticized as somewhat small for most minivan buyers. Previous Quest designs were based on the Maxima sedan, which will soon be a derivative of the new, larger 2002 Altima, but it remains to be seen whether Nissan can keep a car-like character in its new minivan. It's also unclear where the new Quest will be built, but there's a chance that Nissan can find room at its Smyrna, Tennessee complex alongside the Altima and related 2004 Maxima.