DaimlerChrysler executives see the Pacifica -- influenced by minivans, station wagons and S.U.V.'s -- as a segment-buster just as revolutionary as the Chrysler PT Cruiser and the original minivan.
And it's one thing to turn minivans, station wagons, small sedans and coupes, and even small and midsize SUVs into hybrids, but how much demand will there be for a full-size pickup, let alone a hybrid Corvette?
Big pickups tend to be safer for their own occupants than small pickups, but when used as family vehicles they are less safe than minivans and station wagons.
Most of the investment, 610 million Canadian dollars, will be used to revamp a 77-year-old factory in Windsor, Ontario, that currently produces minivans and station wagons.
Representative Billy Tauzin, the Louisiana Republican who led the Congressional investigation last autumn into the Explorer crashes, announced this afternoon that his office had been collecting data since January on tire problems with all models of sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks, minivans and station wagons.
The next lowest rate was in large minivans and station wagons.
Minivans and station wagons all have low driver-death rates, perhaps owing to how they are driven.
The four-door version was such a popular alternative to minivans and station wagons of the era that sales far outpaced corporate parent Chrysler's expectations, encouraging Ford to develop and release the standard-setting Explorer in the early 1990s.
That short trip, on Nov. 2, 1983, began a noteworthy journey in which the minivan dethroned the station wagon as the preferred utility vehicle of American families.
The best seller last year was the tiny Suzuki Wagon R, which looks like a narrow, boxy cross between a minivan and a station wagon, followed by the Daihatsu Move and Honda Life.
