(first posted 3/9/2011) The origin myth of the mini-van is as complicated as evolution itself. No, God is not responsible (he does take credit for the ’59 Caddy, though). It might be a lot easier to unravel if he did. But I’m deeply drawn to compact boxes on wheels and their place in history for some inexplicable reason (I do drive one, after all). Maybe being tall is part of it. But there’s more; something about the pursuit of maximum interior space while casting a small (and rectangular) shadow. Although the modern mini-van had historical precursors, ultimately what we know today as the genre did have a definite beginning. You’re looking at it.
There are two trans-Atlantic heresies about the origins of the modern mini-van/MPV. The American version credits Chrysler’s Caravan/Voyager twins (1984).
The European version credits the Renault Espace (also 1984). They’re both wrong.
Of course, the VW bus, and other utility vans precede these, but they’re in a different class. Their origins in Europe were primarily as commercial vans and buses, and were not particularly compact for their times. There’s a reason the VW called itself “micro-bus.” The driving position, performance and handling dynamics were distinctly un-car like. The gap between cars and micro-buses was just waiting to be exploited.
The quest for innovative and efficient packaging of humans has been a recurring quest of star-designer Giorgetto Giugiaro.
His first stab at a modern “people mover” came in 1976, when his New York Taxi Concept won a competition by the Museum of Modern Art. That led to the definitive 1978 Lancia Megagamma (above), the first true modern MPV. Look familiar?
With a 140hp Subaru-like 2.5-liter boxer four, the Megagamma for the first time offered near-luxury performance, comfort and space in a compact package. Lancia didn’t have the balls or resources to put it into production. But Nissan did, in 1981.
Not exactly as penned by the Ital Design master, but pretty close. And not only did they copy the Megagamma, but also improved on it in a very innovative way. By using sliding doors on both sides and totally eliminating the “B” pillar, access became . . . Axxess. The Prairie was a veritable origami-mobile, including clever slide-out storage compartments (under the seats) and so many hidden nooks and cubbies that some owners keep stumbling onto new ones years later.
Sold initially in Japan (1981) and in Europe (1983), the renamed Stanza Wagon finally made it to the US for 1986, presumably in response to the Caravan. Odd about that name change too, since prairies are more associated with America than Japan.
In 1985, I was managing a new start-up TV station in Los Angeles. We needed some vehicles for our news crews. I had seen a picture of a tricked-out Prairie used by a Japanese network, with a complete ultra-miniaturized control room for remote production. Cool, but we couldn’t afford anything like that or even live feeds. But when a Nissan dealer offered us cars in trade for advertising, I picked a handful of these Stanza wagons. The news crews second-guessed me big-time, presumably out of feelings of inferiority to the big Econolines all the other stations used.
But the compact and efficient Prairies earned their grudging respect. And despite their best efforts to destroy them, the tall-boy wagons wore like iron. Some of them had well over 200k miles on them before they were retired.
Eugene attracts folks that come here for qualities other than . . . high paying corporate jobs. Many are escapees from California and other crowded locales looking for a simpler (and cheaper) lifestyle in a beautiful setting. And they prefer the older close-in neighborhoods that accommodate bicycling, busing or walking to work at the University or some research institute or non-profit organization downtown. Or they make hemp tie-dye underwear to sell at Eugene’s famous Saturday Market. Or just make hemp.
The point is, folks here tend to gravitate to practical, boxy, durable cars, with four-wheel drive when possible, to get them to their favorite weekend hiking, camping, beach or skiing spot. There is a whole genre of distinctive vintage “Eugene-mobiles”. The Stanza Wagon is a prime example; there’s gobs of them around. But good luck trying to find a similar vintage Stanza sedan. I know; I’ve been looking for one for ages.
The fact that the Stanza/Prairie also came in 4WD only adds to its historical status, so maybe we should rightly call it the first CUV while we’re handing out big-time titles.
The Prairie might be considered the unsung wallflower of the Eugene mobiles as much as it is the unsung pioneer of the mini-van segment. It’s not as flashy as the VW bus, but I’m not exaggerating when I tell you there are at least six of them in my neighborhood. Yes, this under-appreciated, vintage, historical, design-pioneering, 4WD box has patina from its daily use by its enthusiastic owner(s). Eugene knows its mini-van history, and it’s very much a living history at that.
As much as I worship at the altar of Lido. Even I know he didn’t invent the minivan.. He just “sold the sizzle”. America took the bait, the rest is history
I forgot you could get a Stanza in any form but sedan. And those are a distant memory..
Okay Paul I reckon this came about via the tie up Nissan had with Alfa seeing as Fiat Alfa Lancia are all the same bankruptcy part owned by a Govt. The plans for the Prarie/Stanza may have been a payoff for Nissan supplying bodies for Alfa to repower. If so Nissan really got the great end of the deal The Alfa powered Nissans were shit but this thing started a trend. By the way Nissan used the Stanza badge on several sedans which one do you mean?
The regular Stanza of this vintage came as hatchback, and later also as a notchback sedan. But there just aren’t any around here anymore (of either version).
Here is a ’85 sedan I saw a while ago but they are oddly absent here too
bigger pics – front http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveseven/4154567796/ and rear http://www.flickr.com/photos/daveseven/4153807645/in/photostream/
There was a hatchback version? I would have figured they sold the Stanza in that body style somewhere, but I had no idea they were available in the US.
Upon consulting Google, I can kinda-sorta remember seeing cars that looked like the Stanza 5-door hatch, but the 3-door is totally foreign to me. Even stranger is that there was apparently a T12 Stanza hatchback sold in the US (picture below).
I haven’t seen a Stanza sedan or wagon around in quite some time, but they were still fairly common here up until ~10 years ago.
I’ve shot both the hatchback and notchback versions of the Stanza, and will get to them one of these days.
The Praire/Stanza is definitely ahead of its time.
It even has the sliding track hidden under the rear quarter window. Chrysler/Dodge minivans didn’t get that until 1996 (Honda Odyssey still doesn’t have it and, ironically, neither does all generations of the Nissan Quest, including the latest 2011 version)
The new Ford B-Max has the B-pillar-less feature, 30 years later.
Looks like it has roll-down second-row windows as well. A feature missing from Dodge Caravan until 2008.
There were quite a few of these old, square Japanese cars in my neighborhood when I was growing up in Toledo, OH. However, the use of salt on the roads during the snowy winters killed them all with rust.
Well you, were true to your word. I’ve always thought these were more like tall wagons, like the Mitsubishi Colt/Honda Civic/Toyota Tercel 4WD wagons of the early-mid ’80’s. Close enough to a mini-van, I guess. And this is certainly a much better effort than the Toyota Van Wagon and whatever the Mitsubishi T-115 fighter was called. The original Chrysler minivans were pretty well thought out and tough to beat.
I fondly remember clambering aboard one of these at the Datsun-Nissan showroom as a child while my parents were shopping to replace their third (and last) Datsun Cherry estate, a lumbering silver N10 ’79 model which Dad remembers least fondly out of all their (3) Cherry estates…
That was almost certainly in ’83 now I come to think of it: the Prairie was too big for my Dad (whose love of small cars is legendary) and we wound up with an ’83 FIAT Panda as our family (of five) transport for the next few years – a car closer to the spirit of the little E10 3 door estate that had sold my folks on Datsuns in the first place.
Back to the Prairie though and my memory is of exploring the insides of a car unlike anything my little six-year-old self had encountered before (and I was a car-nut in the womb, so I’d been paying attention!)
Who’d have thunk back then that by the time my generation was the age my parents were then, we’d almost all be cramming our broods into the Prairie’s direct spiritual descendants – I’ve no kids personally but almost everyone I know my age drives a tall compact MPV/wagon with clever flexible interiors (Zafiras and Mégane Scenics mostly).
Curious that Nissan don’t really field one of their own… unless you count the Renault of course.
When I see a car like this, I wonder where the reasonably equipped, modern, forward thinking and well backed cars are today?
Oh, they are at the Kia dealership.
Called the Nissan Multi in Canada – they where decent sellers here. The Axxess was as well. Here is two matching blue ones on the same street a few blocks from my old house.
Cool picture!
My dad bought a Nissan Axxess new in 1990 and kept it for 13 years and over 300,000 km. It was a lot more fun to drive than my mom’s Chrysler minivans, and the only thing he ever replaced (besides normal wear items like tires) was the clutch – once. He sold it to their neighbor and he got a few more years out of it. The Axxess was roomy, great to drive, well made and reliable. It was much better than any American car he ever owned.
I saw a vintage Nissan Multi commercial on Youtube.
I wonder if they had called Multi in the United States instead of Stanza wagon, if it would had been more popular south of the Great White North?
One more Multi ad.
Our neighbors had one of these, circa 1991. I rode in it a few times as part of a carpool; It had these weird little inward-facing jump seats in the back, like an extended-cab Ranger or S-10.
It’s strange the things you remember. I vividly remember the car and the color (beige), but I can’t remember anything about the family who owned it or even what they looked like, despite nominally being friends with one of their kids. Just goes to show what my priorities were, even at age 5.
My parents had a 1991 Axxess – sadly, the B-pillars had returned by that point.
Does it have a 3rd row of seats? No third row with walk through access, and it is just a tall wagon with gimmicky side doors.
Yup. My thoughts exactly.
And this didn’t look like a minivan. It looked funky and Japanese. In those days, at least where I lived, that was not endearing.
Prairie is one of my all time favourite, i owned a 2002 model but had to sell it off sometime ago.
I’ve been the happy owner of a manual ’95 Eagle Summit LX Wagon since 1998, now with 247,000 miles and driving pretty much the way it did when I bought it with 32,000. It fits in tiny parking spaces and hauls washers, dryers, couches and motorcycles. With the rise of Scion and Cube, my beloved micro-van is finally getting the stateside respect it deserves. From the kid at the glass shop, ‘That little slider! Coolest car ever!’ Official special interesthood is just around the corner.
I STILL have my ’86 Stanza and I sure loved driving this thing every day. I could load anything I wanted to in this car and it rides like a dream. The car is virtually wrapped with windows that make visibility perfection and the a/c, which was vital here in Texas-kept me nice and comfortable. Unfortunately, I had it up for sale and had an interested buyer and someone decided to drive by my house and shoot three holes in her..! I am still trying to decide if I want to fix her back up and put her back on the road or sell her to someone needing another Stanza. She has been kept safe and warm in the meantime and I start her up and run her around the block just to keep her juices flowing. I just have to replace some glass and do some maintenance and bodywork and she will be back in the perfect condition she had been in. No rust, no bumps, no dents… Amazing for a vehicle that has her years that she still manages to get as good or better gas mileage as my 97 Chevy truck.
There is a nissan stanza wagon near me for sale. I was thinking of buying it for my kid but I wanted to know what you thought about the safety as it does not have a side bar between the front and back seats. Afraid if you get hit on the side it would be bad??
It would be worse than a more modern car. It might not be much worse than other cars of that time, since it did have to meet the side impact requirements in force then. But everything has gotten safer since than.
When I sold Nissans back in 1990, I remember the Axxess being a pretty rare bird on the lot. We had only one or two back then. I appreciated the concept of a tall wagon with sliding doors, but the Axxess had a rather harsh and bumpy ride – definitely not a vehicle I’d take on a road trip. (The 1993 Quest was a revelation, by comparison.)
Incidentally, my mother still drives a 1990 Stanza XE sedan. She bought it in 1994 when it had 19K miles on its odometer and it currently has close to 80K miles. The car definitely looks as old as it is, but she’ll keep driving it as long as it continues to run without needing expensive repairs.
Best car in the world ’86 wagon. Our mechanic recently told us to put it to rest. So many stories to tell, we can’t let it go. My dad has carted his huge dogs around in this thing, mostly leaving the hatch and doors open to the weather days into weeks into years, and the upholstery looks amazing still though the outside is weary. Rust starting to eat at the front wheel wells, Nissan offered to repair for free! The design of this car is the best ever, space is amazing, seating — can drive long distances in complete comfort. I can’t find one for sale, any one have a lead to offer for our replacement?
My Mum inherited a Nissan Prairie from my Grandfather who bought it new the year before. It was one of the first cars I learnt to drive on the road in and I went from being in awe of it to being embarrassed by it when I became ‘cool’ and my young friends and I drove either big block Aussie v8s or over boosted early Japanese hot hatches. Years later, long after those ‘cool’ cars had blown up and been scrapped for parts or just broke down, my dear Mama’s Prairie was still going strong. What a reliable little beast of a car. I ended up becoming very fond of it, like an old dog who just does not know when it’s time to quit that old car was greatly missed when Mum finally and unbelievably sold it on. Yes it was still going after all those years of hard driving. Funny thing though, the Prairie was used as a work vehicle for our open water charter and it never looked remotely like rusting despite all that exposure to the salt air.
Could you tell me if the Canadian Multi and the Stanza wagon are the same automobile? It might help me to keep my 4×4 wagon on the road.
Yes, that’s why Multi is in the title.
I owned two of em.Iconic. one auto other manual. cruise would cut out up a hill on one of em. Lots of forward vision. nice convienent sliding doors. firm seats. good interior ergonomics. lightweight rear hatch. kinda awkward little vehicles but better than the bus! Recently had a chance to own one again. I was driving by a hospital and saw an elderly person being ‘escorted’ out of the passenger side. It was non-rusty, and white,nice lookin! But auto. I inquired as to availability or sale? 1000.00 can. was the reply if your serious? and I was serious, but I ended up losing the number!Lol.
I remember seeing these all the time as a kid. I grew up in the later generation of this vehicle (nissan axxess), would love to see CC write an article about that vehicle as well.
Great article!!!
What year did the Colt Vista go on sale?
I experienced one of these in the passenger’s seat. I also consider them more of a wagon than a van. But the owner corrected me in an assertive tone of voice.
Even in the passenger seat I could appreciate the body’s stiffness. It just felt solid.
I remember when I first saw the Nissan Stanza wagon. The Stanza sedan was ugly enough, but I thought the wagon version was ugggly! I’d be embarrassed to be seen in something like that. Even the Chrysler minivans of the time were ugly looking.
This thing looks like a Taliban staff car. Just needs a roof mounted ak47 and about 12 terrists in it.
What’s a terrist?
Is 83markvi even a real person or is it just some kind of bot designed to bother me with its ignorant comments and questionable taste? Everyone knows that the Taliban prefers Toyota Hilux pickups, as do the militants of all war-torn third world nations. How would you even fire an RPG out of a Stanza Wagon? That’s ridiculous.
Has the author changed his minivan DNA stance since writing for TTAC?:
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2010/03/1972-ford-carousel-the-chrysler-minivans-true-father/#more-350855
No matter. Here’s the Ghia Mini Max concept, est. to be circa 1982. While the Mini Max is often described by Hal Sperlich/Lee Iacocca mavens as the inspiration for what would eventually be the Chrysler minivan, in truth, while at Ford, they had been working on something quite larger, the aforementioned Ford Carousel (which was based on the full-size Ford Econoline).
Undoubtedly, Sperlich still wanted to get a Carousel-type people mover built after he moved to Chrysler with Iacocca, remembered the Minimax, and realized he could make a smaller, ‘garageable’, FWD version of the Carousel from the K-car chassis.
It’s also worth noting that, besides sliding rear doors, another main criteria for a ‘minivan’ is that the rear seats can be quickly and easily removed without tools. Is that possible with the rear seats of the Stanza wagon?
Not really. Pinning down the minivan’s roots definitively is pretty much impossible, like so many automotive historical issues. But the Carousel doesn’t really get the nod, as it wasn’t never built, and had RWD. The minivan had multiple origins.
It just occurred to me that the Ghia Mini Max looks a lot like the GM dustbuster minivans (Chevy Lumina APV, Pontiac Trans Sport, Olds Silhouette). I guess we now know the styling inspiration for those.
Regional differences are interesting. I still see a Stanza sedan every so often here in Alabama but one of these are few and far between. I do a double take whenever I do, which is rather seldom.
I was always fascinated by the missing B pillar in these, and still wonder how it affected structural integrity. When they were new, I was not really interested. When they were middle aged, I needed bigger. Now, one of these would be perfect. The Element may be the closest modern approximation.
Everyone here seems to be ignoring the REAL successor to the Stanza SW mini-minivan w/ dual sliding doors. The 2006-2014 Mazda 5 is what we replaced our 1988 Nissan Stanza SW with. 4 cylinder power, though more of it, 5 speed, dual sliding doors, 30 mpg. The Stanza had 180K, had been ‘totaled’ by an insurance company after a moron ran a stop sign in a full-size Ford PU, had been bought back for $75 salvage value, repaired by silicon-attaching a Hyundai junkyard headlight into the usual location, and driven that way (after a safety inspection by the MVD) for the last 20K before we sold it for $800! And that buyer drove it for at least 2 years (or more) thereafter. Non-normal repairs while we owned it were only replacing the leaking steering rack! Our Mazda 5, purchased new in January ’06 has needed nothing other than normal scheduled maintenance and has 100K+ so far. We have driven it across the US multiple times, as well as from AZ to and from the Pacific NW multiple times. It really is the spiritual successor to the Nissan.
My late great uncle and aunt on the liberal side of the family–transplant Vermonters, of course–had one of these in light blue. Though not at all my taste, it was undeniably practical and allowed the then early septuagenarians to cruise around on road trips. As I recall it was replaced with a Legacy wagon which was their last car.
My parents had an 85 Stanza 4 door 5 speed sedan until 1994. I drove it many times, it had good power and was smooth riding and very reliable. Mom ran a stop sign and was hit by a motorcycle with 2 people on it. It spun the car around and she banged up her leg. Hit on the drivers side fender, wheel. Thank God the people on the motorcycle flew over the hood and the man only got a broken ankle and his girlfriend just cuts and bruises. The car was within a few dollars of totaled, but was repaired. After she got it back it had an oil leak, turned out the head had been cracked in the accident. The insurance fixed it, but said it would have been totaled had it been noticed before the car was repaired. She was so mad she got a ticket, as the motorcycle “came out of nowhere”. She got mad when I said it had to come from somewhere. I just got a dirty look and was told they must have been going “way too fast”.
I had 2 Multi’s. The first my soon to be wife, rolled it when she swerved to miss hitting a cat and caught the shoulder of the road at 80km/h. It rolled 2 times and was stopped by a tree. It was near my parents house in the country and the neighbours called to say my car was in an accident. I was second on the scene. The drivers door was stuck but opened with a considerable shove. The passenger’s door was up against the tree. She was shook up and bruised but no major injuries. We had it towed to the farm and when I was cleaning it out was amazed to discover that the sliding doors on both sides still worked.
After that I bought a 4×4 version that I abused for a few years before selling to a friend.
They were impressive vehicles for the time. Quirky, efficient and reliable.
One of my earliest recollections of cars in general involves this particular model.
My grandparents owned a variety of Subarus thoughout the late 80s and early 90s. I remember riding in this very model (same color and interior) as a little kid sometime circa 1990. I also recall my grandfather’s blue on blue ’87 or so DL!! This Stanza made several round trips from Buffalo, NY to Florida as that’s where Grandma and Grandpa lived. Eventually, the Subies were replaced by a ’92 and a ’94 Taurus.
Sadly, the only place one can see these here in the Northeast is either CurbsideClassics.com or wikipedia…
Subarus were my favourite cars during the 80s, unique styling, boxer engine, part-time awd. I was too young to drive at the time, but I’ve always admired those cars.
Definitely “beauty challenged” but honest, straightforward cars with some very innovative features. Best of breed of the tall wagons and definitely a proto-minivan.
I still see two of them on the regular in Richmond–one lives in my neighborhood (clean and I suspect someone’s daily driver, but sounds like it needs a muffler) and another is driven by someone at my work location (looks brand new despite its age).
Idk… I don’t see how the stanza copied anything from the megagamma. And I still say VW started the whole mini-van craze!!
Had one of these new and replaced it with the new stanza a few years later. Loved the car but back then you bought a new car every three or four years. Your right about the amazing storage – the armrest even opened up so you could hide valuables. Used to race a corvette from light to light down Yonge street in downtown toronto to drop off my wife and he never passed me. I liked it because it was built to pass car safety standards and did reasonbley well in crash testing. It was also our first camper, we removed the bench and put in an ikea foam mattress and travelled across Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes in it
I have a 1985 Nissan Stanza it runs great and has no problems.
My friend’s mom had one of these 4wd wagons with a 5 speed that she used when she went to dog shows. It was a perfect vehicle for that until the Wisconsin winters took their toll on the body, and replaced it with a Ford E-150 conversion van. I have some pretty fond memories of bombing around in it when we were in high school.
Any idea why these got renamed “Stanza Wagon” in the US? This is weird because (a) it’s not like the Stanza sedans/hatchbacks were great sellers and that they’d gain much by tapping into Stanza brand equity, and (b) they weren’t even built on the Stanza platform but rather that of the smaller Sentra/Sunny. It did get the larger 2.0L engine from the Stanza; this had just become available in other markets and may have been why Nissan delayed US availability. Anyway, I think calling it either “Prairie” or “Multi” would have drawn more attention to it.
These feel more like a proto-crossover to me than a proto-minivan, although the sliding doors, removable 2nd row, 1st/2nd row walk-through, and flat floor are all crucial minivan features. Missing, at least in the US, was 3rd row seating; Wikipedia tells me that some markets got some sort of 8 or 9 passenger seating though I can’t find any pics online. Still, these were too small to compete as an American-style minivan, even though Nissan did beat Chrysler to the punch. I doubt these in any way directly influenced the Chrysler vans; Lee Iacocca and Hal Sperlich had been kicking around the minivan idea when they were at Ford in the early 1970s, and it reached prototype stage. Yes it was RWD, but it was unabashedly a family-oriented passenger van designed to drive like a car, not a cargo van with windows and seats like earlier small vans designed largely with commercial use in mind. That early Ford minivan didn’t get greenlighted though, as their marketing research showed it would likely just cannibalize sales of their highly profitable Country Squire full-size wagons. I’m reminded of what Apple liked to say when asked why they were unconcerned their then-new iPhones would eat into sales of their wildly popular iPods: “if we don’t cannibalize sales of our own products, somebody else will”. Ford was afraid to do that, so instead Chrysler ended the decades-long reign of the Country Squire as the default American family truckster.