SUV

This should have sliding doors.

Most families these days look to SUVs for their transportation. Personally, I think the SUV craze reveals a lot of self-deception about the American consumer. The difference between a crossover SUV and a minivan essentially boils down to which doors are installed on the back: sliding doors means a minivan, conventional opening doors means an SUV. 

Sliding doors are way more practical, because kids can't open them up into traffic or parked cars. But somehow the image of the minivan is one of resignation: buying one in American culture means you've given up on having a fun life and are sacrificing everything for your kids and "practicality".  

Look at the footnotes of this classic restaurant review of the Olive Garden by LA Weekly, where a restaurant critic blasts unsophisticated suburban food, surrounded by a parking lot full of "late model minivans". Or remember the Swagger Wagon campaign from Toyota - still painfully relevant to us minivan drivers.

SUVs, on the other hand, project an adventurous, rugged image, as if on the weekends you strap your camping gear to the roof and go live in a national park. The self-deception, of course, is that most SUVs are used for transporting kids and other practical tasks rather than exploring the great outdoors, marketing notwithstanding.

As a consequence of this image problem, the number and variety of minivans for sale keeps falling, while SUVs that serve the same function multiply like rabbits. We looked around at a few SUVs: the Ford Explorer, the Mazda CX-9, the Honda Pilot, the Toyota Highlander. Also thought about the Volvo XC90. But with a three year old, we weren't willing to give up on kid-proof doors.

So SUVs were out of the question. We've always been a little countercultural anyway. ;)