Submitted by hucklecat721 t3_10w6ssa in vermont
I'm searching for a new family car to replace a mid-sized SUV, and one family member is making a strong pitch for a minivan instead of another SUV. I see the Toyota Sienna and Chrysler Pacifica have all-wheel-drive, but I'm still worried about the low ground clearance during mud season. How big a factor is ground clearance versus AWD? Has anyone made that switch successfully (or unsuccessfully?)
meanwhile in NEK, Topsham, etc: 20 yo Corollas and Accords chiefing it up hills no problem
Yep. Our 2 soccer-playing kids grew up being driven around in a Honda Civic. Our hill is notorious for mud and ice & we used to entertain ourselves laughing at the 4WDs getting stuck, or sliding backwards down the hill. Lightweight cars are your friend in mud season and GOOD snows are your friend in winter. That's all you need.
All the soccer stuff fit fine in the trunk, the kids fit fine in the back seat, the car sailed through mud and was rock solid in snow. There's a lot of mythology around what you need for driving in VT. A whole lot of people waste a lot of money on big vehicles (and fuel for them) that they simply don't need.
What about clearance when you fall off the ridge and into the ruts? Have Civic. Never attempted my hill during mud season.
I never had an issue. There is a balancing game between maintaining a speed that will float you through anything if you fall off the ridges, and going slow enough to be able to steer well enough to ride the ridges. It took some practice, but it was quite doable. I never got stuck on a road (don't ask about getting stuck my driveway on the days I didn't leave before the sun thawed it).
My current car is electric, and since the battery is on the bottom and the car weighs a lot more, I wouldn't take it on bad roads in mud season if you paid me, even though it has more clearance.
Heh, true. I’ve been running FWD SAABs for 20 years, been bogged in the mud twice. Both times were because the cars were lowered an inch from factory. And one of those times I had zero business even attempting the route, I just decided to send it.
I have a coworker who has a Sienna AWD van, he put slightly taller AT tires on it so it lifted the ground clearance about an inch. He drives it all over for camping and stuff. He loves it.
Very cool, did he use a lift kit or just upgrade the tires?
I'll suggest Falken A/T Trails. It's their SUV version of the Wildpeak AT3Ws, and are snow rated.
I run them year round on my wife's Traverse and they're great through all weather. We're near Bromley, and live at the top of a mountain.
Those were the exact tires he used, I recommended them as I was running the AT3W’s on my old school Isuzu Trooper. Great all around tire for the cash.
Just a tire/wheel swap.
Depending on the SUV, the minivans may have comparable ground clearance. If the SUV you currently have has AWD and not 4WD, there's a chance the Siennas AWD system is better as well. Plenty of people drive FWD or RWD sedans and hatchbacks during mud season. I wouldn't worry about it too much. I'd recommend test driving all the vehicles you are considering and looking into the ground clearance as well (Sienna 6.3", Pacifica AWD 5.4"). I'd also recommend the Sienna over the Pacifica for reliability reasons.
get a lift kit and some 44's it'll look awesome and it'll have the clearance! (actually just posted due to a similar dilemma so I can find it
why stop at 44s? what if OP needs to drive across Lake Champlain???
road noise thats why, imagine trying to sound proof a mini van. C'mon a little sense here.
ah, touche. Plus anything above 44s might complicate parking at the mall
but, bigger than 44s might also help you climb out of Route 7 traffic if youre there at the wrong time in on Shelburne rd.
is engine swapping to an F-35 engine out of the question at this point? what if he needs to shoot down Chinese spy balloons?
too much torque and I'm not exactly sure how well my .22 target practice would translate to the weapons system needed for said balloons.
Awesome, this sounds like the best of both worlds.
It'll look even better if you put spinners and ground-effects lighting on that bad boy, too.
I do fine with my Honda Civic. You'll be OK with a 4WD anything.
A friend does have a sienna and it works super well. They have lots of traction.
Edit for my pedantic friend: AWD not 4WD
Not to be pedantic ass but….puts on pedant ass hat
AHKTUALLY 4wd and AWD are not the same, and the fact that you maybe think they are and also claim that your Civic is always totally fine on all VT mud season roads makes me think maybe you don’t actually have the experience/expertise to weigh in on this.
If we're being pedantic, I never said "on all mud season roads"
I just said it's fine. I don't go over Roxbury gap in the height of mud season but I do handle dirt roads regularly and get by. Just gotta stay on top of the ruts!
Really depends on the road you live on and roads you travel often. If you’re not going up mountains and rough dirt roads you should be fine in terms of ground clearance.
Avoid that Chrysler like the plague.
IMO if you are truly experiencing mud season there’s no replacement for ground clearance. An AWD car will get stuck on an otherwise passable road if it bottoms out. A tall vehicle with FWD and decent tires will still likely make it through.
I think it’s important to know what degree of mud season you experience. Like some of the comments here indicate to me that people are like “oh yeah the half mile of dirt road I travel once a week gets kinda squishy so I know mud season!” - meanwhile there have been entire months of March where I can’t drive my 4wd truck within half a mile of my house. And trucks taller/four-wheel-drivier than mine are stuck.
My Civic handled 7 miles each way on aptly-named "Swamp Rd" in Newbury for years, til I got a Prius C (the tiny Prius). Light cars are great in mud season.
I have an awd Sienna. Live on top of a mile long dirt road/hill. Never been stuck. It goes everywhere all the time. Put winters on it, but no other mods.
I rented a Sienna hybrid a month ago and really liked it. Tons of room. Great MPG (and I don't say that lightly, I usually drive a Tesla).
with the good luck I've had with Toyota products in the past, I'd definitely recommend it.
The only part I didn't like isn't relative here. It had those damn powered sliding doors that drove me crazy.
It really does depends on the road and how well it drains.
Class 3 road from the south going into camp in the NEK is 8 miles of dirt and fine thru mud season. Town spent big re-laying the base. Class 3 road to the east is 3 miles of dirt and I pulled a truck out buried to the frame rails a few years ago. It's on the list of roads to fix
Ground clearance is the important thing in mud
I have an Acura MDX Advance and that thing muds almost as well as some people's Jeep CJs lol
I also have a friend that tried to bury his Tesla Model X and couldn't.
I think you're safe.
Not mine but one that I saw recently. It’s awd and looked like it had a slight lift in it as well as bigger tires.
They’re fine. Just have good tires and be cautious of ground clearance.
The new Siennas are terrific.
depends on how deep your ruts are. we drove a 2001 chrysler town and country for years in real deep tahoe conditions with "taller" blizzak snows and never got stranded. the awd system was superior(amazing really) to your average SUV(made by Puch in Austria). Not sure about the new Pacifica.
It's not the rig, it's how you drive it.
Ground clearance is most important, but AWD/4WD is nearly as important. Staying on top of the ruts during mud season is more achievable with 4WD. We drive Big Hollow and Shaker Mountain daily. The following autos have made it when others failed: Toyota RAV4, Chevy Tracker/Suzuki Vitara, Nissan XTERRA, Toyota Previa (discontinued 🙁), Ford Expedition, Toyota Landcruiser, Ford and Chevy half-tons with weight in the bed, Ford 1-ton with nothing in it….. But the most unstoppable vehicle on a mud-season road was a Polaris side-by-side 😁
Switched to a sienna four years ago. Live 2 miles off of paved roads. No problems with mud or snow. Although, I wouldn’t take it on a class four road.
We have a 2010 AWD Sienna and a 2011 AWD Hyundai Sante Fe, and just last week(!) got a new 2023 AWD Sienna. 3 miles of dirt one way, 2 miles of dirt with steep hill the other, both fairly well maintained and not the horror stories you see pictures of, but still, rutted mud.
The Hyundai has a 'locking differential' button which makes it a little easier to drive in the mud, but our 2010 Sienna (and our 1994 AWD Chrysler Grand Caravan before that) have done ok. Never been stuck or even close to it.
The 2010 Sienna did not have a 'traction control off' button like newer ones do, so sometimes the 'OMG! You're slipping!' beep noise would make me a bit crazy. The lack of that off button meant it sometimes reduced power to wheels just as I was climbing a muddy hill.
The new 2023 does have a traction control off button, but I haven't tried it yet. The new AWD is hybrid and I believe rear wheel power is run by an electric motor which I think means no transaxle to the back. I'm not worried about the mud. We had an AWD VW Passat station wagon for a while but it was too low to the ground for our road.
I will say that our minivans have been much more comfortable and more generally useful than our SUV. Our 2023 did not come with a spare tire and I think if you don't get it from factory, there's not a place to put one securely. The 2010 could hold a 4x8 sheet of plywood, but I think the new one is a bit narrower than 4' inside which is unfortunate (I need to measure). But be warned, it took us 10 months to get a new one, partly because I wanted something specific which reduced the pool size.
I looked at Chrysler Pacifica's briefly, but after joining a dedicated Pacifica FB group and seeing all the troubles they had, decided to wait for the Toyota.
Many years in an AWD Sienna on a dirt-road hilltop. Got stuck in mud once (worst mud season I ever saw). Plenty of traction; was plowing mud before I ran out of ground clearance. Too low. Other years it was touch-and-go too many time for comfort. Put the biggest tires that'll fit and you might be okay. It's a great paved-suburb vehicle. A good dirt road van 90% of the time, just not in bad mud. Personally, I hated the thing but that's a separate issue.
I used to drive a Sienna until it rusted out from under me. The AWD rarely kicked on, but the ground clearance was a PITA. Lift it up an inch or two and it's a great vehicle for VT.
Bought an AWD Sienna last winter and put bigger rims and beefy tires on it - it now has better clearance than a Range Rover (only using that comparison because we were parked next to one right after we did the tire switch). We were going to do a lift kit but ultimately didn't bother, we never bottomed out on the mud season ruts last year. Definitely recommend.
Do you happen to know the tire specs you upgraded to? That seems like a great path forward. There are a number of suggestions here of a 1" or 2" lift, but if the new tires alone are enough that would be great.
It was both new tires and rims, we upgraded to the biggest size possible without rubbing. Tires were Falken WildPeak A/T3W in a 245/65R17; 17 inch rims (Vision Cross, but they're all pretty similar). Not sure what the offset on the rims was, but https://www.siennachat.com/ is a good resource if you decide to go with Toyota.
I don't know a ton about minivans but I know from experience that mud season is all about clearance. The two times I've gotten stuck in mud were in an AWD Subaru that got high centered. I would look for the tallest AWD minivan they make.
I live on a well maintained dirt road and have had a honda odyssey for 3 years, so far no problems during mud season. Your results may vary, but so far it's been fine.
Same here. The only roads I won’t take the Odyssey on around here (Shoreham) in the spring are the ones that are closed for the winter. I will take my RAV on those.
Don’t know if the newer Sienna’s have it, but older ones had run flat tires so swapping to winters was a hassle. The rear differential apparently occupied the space for the spare tire so they just didn’t include a spare and installed run flats 😆
If swapping tires on the same rims is a hassle, because of run-flat tires, then the obvious answer is to mount snow tires on a second set of rims for winter/mud season.
Also, FWIW, I have a Chrysler Pacifica minivan, but mine is just the standard front-wheel-drive gas-powered version. No hybrid or AWD. And my van doesn't even have a spare tire at all. It has a can of tire puncture sealer and a little air compressor I can use to apply the sealer and re-inflate my tire. So even standard vans don't all have spare tires, even without run-flats.
Run flats are special tires from what I understand. It really limits your winter options, no?
That’s crazy they just give you some puncture sealer! What if you get a large puncture or a sidewall cut? You’re screwed 😜
Why would run flats limit winter tire options?
Avoid the Chrysler. We have a AWD Sienna and it’s done great in snow, not sure about mud. But there is a community who lifts their AWD siennas about 3” and can get larger tires on them too. Definitely consider the Sienna and if you’re really worried about ground clearance, just lift it!
I have a 2006 AWD Toyota Sienna. We live off a long dirt road and we are very happy with it. We do snow tires with studs in the winter and the family has started calling it "the tank" because it drives really well. The only complaint is it does hydroplane much easier than our SUV so that is something to watch out for in heavy rain or slushy snow. The clearance is 2 inches more than the current generation 7" vs 5" I believe and that is another reason why we got this model. We have the bottom undercoated every other year to keep rust away. As far as mud season I have never gotten stuck (knock on wood) and our road gets real bad. Again it doesn't handle quite as well as the SUV. The rural mail man offers to buy the van every time he sees us, so that says something. He also drives a sienna.
Mud season last year i was driving past abandoned minivans sunk 12-16 inches in the mood on a daily basis. I ripped the underbelly of our prius off 3 times. I high clearance and AWD is required...personally i think subaru outback is hands down the best
Is you want a vehicle that's great it all seasons then get a Subaru. There is a reason so many Vermonters drive them
Toyota beats Subaru for reliability..
Most brands do
Having owned an '88 Subaru and loved it, and a '18 Subaru...I'll never buy another Subaru.
Same, I had a 90 legacy with a manual. Incredibly good car. I wouldn’t touch any Subaru made in the last 15 years.
If the used the modern bodies with 80s internals...good god that'd be the epitome a BIFL.
Only bad thing about the older ones was the bodies rusted out just by looking at them.
After having a sienna I wouldnt due to the fact that there was no spare tire. Suffered several flats and traded it in.
You can easily and cheaply find a compatible spare online or at a junkyard. Not a big enough issue to discount the sienna entirely.
IKR? Could walk into a junkyard and buy a cheap ass wheel that has same bolt pattern and backspacing then go slap any newish tire on the wheel and they would have a full size spare tire.
just providing my experience with sienna. AWD was nice living up in elevation on a dirt road. The 3rd flat tire in freezing temps made us drive to dealership and get a forerunner.
the mental gymnastics here is impressive
R3tr0revival t1_j7lcsnx wrote
I would generally avoid Chrysler products.