2005 Honda Odyssey Test Drive

Honda Odyssey Vs. Toyota Sienna

The Odyssey and the Sienna are two of the best minivans on the market. Which one is right for you?

The Honda Odyssey and Toyota Sienna minivans are case studies in the success of Japanese automakers. Arguably the two best minivans in history, both demonstrate the high level of quality for which their companies are known and are meticulously designed and manufactured.

While DaimlerChrysler's Chrysler subsidiary invented the minivan and still owns the segment's sales champion--the Dodge Caravan and Grand Caravan, with 201,911 American sales in the first ten months of 2004--Toyota Motor and Honda Motor keep outdoing themselves with their vans. In the first ten months of this year, Sienna sales in the U.S. matched 67% of Dodge's minivan sales and increased by 73% compared with the same period last year.

As with most American cars, American minivans ordinarily come with better rebates and financing deals than their Japanese counterparts, and Caravans may, in some cases, come cheaper than Siennas and Odysseys. But their supremacy in sales comes from excessive production, not high market demand, while the Toyota and Honda models are in chronically short supply. According to Automotive News, Dodge dealers on Nov. 1 were carrying a 76-day supply of Caravans, while Honda dealers had only a 24-day supply of Odysseys.

Toyota and Honda keep demand high and discounts low with refined, modern vehicles. The Caravan's engines are weaker and noisier than the Japanese engines and are good examples of major components that are less sophisticated than their Japanese analogs.

On the other hand, the Sienna and Odyssey are equipped and priced like luxury vehicles. While both vehicles start in the mid-$20,000s, high-end versions run into the high $30,000s--and fetch close to sticker price. The fanciest Siennas have luxury-car features such as laser cruise control that adapts the braking and gas to maintain a constant distance behind the car you are following. The Honda Odyssey Touring model costs $39,000--and is worth it--with a leather interior, rear-seat DVD player and navigation system.

Moreover, the Japanese minivans are current. Dodge recently upgraded the Caravan with second- and third-row seats that fold into the floor, but the Honda and Toyota have each been recently redesigned from top to bottom. The new Odyssey went on sale Sept. 22, while Toyota released the new Sienna last year as a 2004 model.

After the overhauled Sienna arrived, it dethroned the Odyssey as the sales king of Japanese minivans. Although the Odyssey was only four years old when the second-generation Sienna debuted (cars usually go about seven years between redesigns), Honda rededicated itself to making the Odyssey the benchmark and quickly released a new version that is every bit as fancy and capable as the new Sienna.

Honda and Toyota work hard to study and respond to the purchasing preferences of their customers. Their American researchers clearly spent a great deal of time fine-tuning the already-refined minivans and the new Sienna and Odyssey are geared specifically for American tastes. Both are also built in the U.S.--the Sienna in Princeton, Ind., and the Odyssey in Lincoln, Ala.

Toyota is not exactly rushing to be the minivan sales champion. Its style--like that of Honda--is to build volume slowly so that it doesn't get too far ahead of itself and end up in a situation like those that befell the Chrysler PT Cruiser wagon and Volkswagen New Beetle two-door. In these cases, demand spiked in the vehicles' first or second years, capacity was quickly and widely increased, the vehicles' sales performances cooled and dealers became oversupplied.

The Sienna is inching closer to the top of the minivan mountain, and its sales performance seems quite familiar. The Toyota Camry and Honda Accord are perennially two of the best-selling passenger cars in the U.S., but the parent companies took about 20 years to ramp up the vehicles to volumes of 300,000 or 350,000 units per year. Now, expect them to team that patient attitude with the dramatic, valuable redesigns of their minivans, making it hard for any other automakers to challenge them once they reach the top.