
I attended the Canadian International Auto Show in Toronto this past week and was able to take some pictures of the Chrysler Pacifica as well as listen to a presentation. here are some of the pictures that I took and I also have written here some of the things that were said in the presentation, as well as my own thoughts. Let me know if you have any questions and I will try to answer them if I can.
FCA seems to be quite proud of being the first company to build a minivan, and also one of the last to continue to build minivans, and they have pretty good reason to be proud since the new Pacifica is a really nice looking example of a minivan. The two things I will mainly talk about are the styling and the hybrid variant.
The Pacifica is a brand new nameplate, which comes with a brand new architecture and styling. A snow drift was used as the inspiration for the sheet metal, and Chrysler wanted to make sure the Pacifica remained sporty. I think they did a pretty good job within the limits of what a minivan must be shaped like. The little spoiler on the rear contributes nicely to this sporty feel.
The Pacifica hybrid is the very first hybrid minivan. The hybrid version has a range of about 850 km (battery + gas) or 48 km when running on battery only. The hybrid version looks different from the gas powered version with a unique interior, grille, and teal color option. Chrysler plans to put out a full EV version of the Pacifica in the future.
Some last notes on cool features... There are screens attached to the back of the front seats for rear seat passengers. An app that is available for the screens is called "Are we there yet?" which visualizes for kids how long till you reach your destination, similar to the map on an airplane. Now parents have one less reason to talk with their children while in the car.
I was pretty impressed with the van in person. The hybrid sounds great, but I'll have to do some math to see if the battery range is worth the extra cost. The gas version may be a better choice financially.
And here is one last picture to show you the difference in grille between the hybrid and gas versions.
