One Dad’s Quest for the Greatest Minivan Money Can Buy, Part 2: A Real Man Drives a Minivan, I Swear

The waves crashed and roared in the morning sun as I tore around the curves at Pebble Beach on a warm October day.  Pebble’s iconic Lone Cypress emerged around a turn, so I screeched into a parking space to take a look and a few photos. I rose from my car, whipped off my sunglasses, and ran a hand through my windblown locks of brown hair, my bearded chin jutting into the sky like a rocky crag covered in thick sagebrush. I inhaled a few breaths of fresh, salty, solitary air when a few good ‘ol boys pulled up next to me. Hootin’ and back-slappin’ they emerged from their rental Hyundai Accent, killing some hours before their mid-morning tee time. Mr. Sweater Vest noticed me and grinned.

“Nice car,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said with a slight lift of my left eyebrow. I glanced over my shoulder at my ride: the Lexus LC500 convertible. I took another look at the Lone Cypress, solemn and proud on its lonely cliff. I closed my eyes and thought about 2021, and the many events that brought me to this place. At that moment, it was me, the Good ‘Ol Boys, their leader, Mr. Sweater Vest, and my sick sports car. It was a great day to be a Man. But the Lone Cypress, with 200 years of wisdom in its roots, loomed behind me.

“Tell the truth,” it whispered into the wind.

“It’s a loaner,” I sighed, biting my lower lip.  “I drive a minivan.”

I slumped back into the driver’s seat and fiddled with the rearview mirror. Were they laughing at me? My hair seemed a little more unkempt in the mirror than before. My sunglasses were crooked. A greasy hotel napkin lay crumpled in the passenger seat where I had stowed a breakfast burrito for on-the-road consumption. And as I peeled off down the 17-mile drive, I was no longer the badass that sped through Big Sur with the top down and not a care in the world. Instead, I was a frumpy stay-at-home dad in sweat pants and flip flops who tagged along with his wife at her fancy corporate offsite. I was some guy who, rather than golfing at Pebble Beach, took the hotel’s complimentary Lexus test drive two days in a row with the exact same car and with no intention to buy it.

I was the guy who once had the perfect minivan but watched it sail away, like an errant tee shot into the Restless Sea.

The Grumpy Toad’s Last Ride

On the day after St. Patrick’s Day, 2021, I watched a tow truck drag The Grumpy Toad, my beautiful, green minivan, across the asphalt in front of my house. In a symphony of screeching metal, he was pulled onto a flatbed truck. He slowly disappeared around the corner, leaving me to pick up little pieces of glass and metal out of the gutter, my last memories of the perfect minivan. After all that I’d been through, the soul-searching, identity-questioning, and Sacramento-one-way-road-tripping, I wasn’t a minivan dad after all.  A drunk-driving young bro, of all people, had totaled my Grumpy Toad. I was left there in the gutter with little pieces of glass and wire, and with questions.

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What was I going to do? Would I ever find a minivan that made me feel the way that Grumpy Toad made me feel? Without a minivan, what kind of a stay-at-home dad was I?

Before I knew it, I was thundering through the Mojave Desert on my way to Mammoth Lakes. The wind whipped through my hair, but instead of pumpkin cream cold brews I was chugging Red Bulls. That’s what you do when you’re a Bro Dad behind the wheel of a GMC Yukon XL. While the body shop was busy carving up The Grumpy Toad for spare parts, I burst into Enterprise and demanded satisfaction. 

“Replace The Grumpy Toad, NOW, and make me whole again!” I roared. The young buck behind the desk, probably named “Chad,” handed me the keys with the easy smile of a 22-year-old who has no worries except how long until happy hour starts that day. I waved to Chad on my way out of the parking lot, the happy driver of a Giant SUV so gigantic it had “XL” stamped upon its mighty tailgate. I found a flat brimmed hat, loaded up on Red Bulls and chicharrones, and prepared to roar past station wagons and minivans and sad little Priuses on Highway 395 with a healthy plume of good old-fashioned American exhaust. My baby boy chugged gas station milk cartons in my rearview mirror. I turned up the country songs about trucks. And when I finally took my first, booted step out of the Yukon’s cab into some crusty snow in Mammoth, it didn’t matter what kind of stay-at-home dad I was. I wasn’t a minivan man. But I was a Man, that was for damn sure. The Grumpy Toad was long gone, and perhaps there was no turning back.

The Hunt for Grumpy Toad 2.0

A couple of days later, my insurance company called to tell me my Man Card had expired. The rental coverage funding my XL Testosterone Mobile was up in two days, so I had to think about my life beyond the GMC Yukon XL. Beast Wife sat by the fire that night cheerfully reading through minivan reviews. Chrysler Pacifica. Honda Odyssey. The Grumpy Toad 2.0. I stared at the flames in silence. I hadn’t yet mourned The Grumpy Toad. But now I felt like I had to mourn my Yukon XL too. There was too much going on in my head to handle another search. Beast Wife could tell that something was wrong. So while I sipped bourbon and imagined my life as a carless nomad, pushing my kids around town in a Costco shopping cart, she took over. By the next afternoon, we had our first lead.

Beast Wife outsourced our search for the White Whale of minivans to DriveWise Auto, a charity-driven auto broker. While I continued to stare into the fire, DriveWise handled the searching for me. It was the perfect solution. It also seemed too good to be true. Within hours, a fully-loaded, Chrysler Pacifica plug-in hybrid was ours. It wasn’t the Grumpy Toad. But it might have been even better. It had the best-in-class infotainment system. It was the “Sport” model. And it was Murdered Out.

If you’re wondering what “Murdered Out” means, you’re not cool (I had to look it up on Urban Dictionary). “Murdered Out” refers to a black paintjob, black trim, black rims, black details, black everything. If a stay-at-home dad wrote gangsta rap, he’d drive a minivan like this. I was stoked and a little intimidated. The Grumpy Toad was my first love, my White Whale. But perhaps I rushed our relationship. I was a little desperate at the time. He was cool and sexy, but I didn’t really play the field much in the minivan world before settling for the flashy green van with all-wheel drive. I didn’t know that a Murdered Out Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid was a possibility for someone like me.

But suddenly, it wasn’t. As we waited for the gangsta minivan to arrive, I borrowed my friend’s Chevy Volt back home. It was a clown car compared to a minivan (no offense, Chevy), but at least I could practice plugging-in to something.  After waiting for a few weeks beyond our delivery date, my Drivewise agent called me on a Friday afternoon. I was walking around the block, dreading the daily struggle to fold my two kids into the Volt. My gangsta van couldn’t come soon enough.

“Uh… this is just crazy,” she said. “This has never happened before. I don’t know what to say.”

“Um… ok,” I said.

“The system says your van arrived at the shipping facility… but no one can find it. It’s on a transport vehicle somewhere… but we don’t know where. Just today, the shipping company filed a police report….”

And just like that, my second van, a van so perfect it was too cool for me to drive, had been stolen.

Totaled. Stolen. I was 0 – 2 on my quest for a minivan. I was infatuated with the unobtainable GMC Yukon XL. And my aching back was getting sick and tired of the Chevy Clown Car. I thought I should give up and just buy a Rav4 or something and get this over with. The Universe didn’t want me to have a minivan. But the question lingered: without a minivan, who was I? Every time I imagined myself as an at-home dad, I was squeezing my cargo short-covered ass into the cab of a minivan. As manly as a Giant SUV made me feel, no boost of testosterone or pride or approved applications for the Man Card could replace the elegant joy of the double sliding doors. I couldn’t give up now.

The Man Gets His Van

I endured the Chevy Volt for a few more weeks while we waited for a new van to materialize. The global auto shortage, the microchip supply chain crisis, and the booming Black Market for sweet minivans were all excuses I texted to my friend each week when he asked me to return his car. Mercifully, another DriveWise buyer got cold feet at the last minute. My broker called me with the specifications. It was a Chrysler Pacifica plug-in hybrid, but it was not Murdered Out. It had the best-in-class infotainment system, but it lacked all-wheel drive. It was not the White Whale of minivans, but I was desperate to move on with my life. The details didn’t matter at this point. What mattered was that I could email my credit card information, my insurance card, and my driver’s license, and I could finally load my kids into their car seats through glorious double sliding doors again. It wasn’t the White Whale, but it was mine. Sorta (I’m leasing it).

Later that week, I was at a gas station in Santa Monica when a guy my age roared into the space next to me in a bright blue Subaru WRX sports car. The sun was bright and hot, so I hid behind my sunglasses. I tucked my bearded chin into my chest. I batted at the pieces of lint stuck to my sweat pants. “Pump your gas and move-on,” I thought, “nothing to see here.” But I could sense that he was looking at me. I bit my lower lip and looked up. Sure enough, this hometown Good ‘Ol Boy was grinning at me.

“Is this your car?” he said.

“Yep,” I said. My lower lip started to bleed.

“That’s awesome.”

“Oh yeah?” I braced for impact.

“Thank you for buying a minivan. Too many people buy SUV’s. I have two kids and I wish I had one of those.”

I was still standing there like a silhouette as he screeched out of the station and onto the highway.

Thank you for buying a minivan.

I climbed into my seat, buckled my seatbelt, and hit the Start button. I stared at the console and I could almost hear the crashing waves under the Lone Cypress somewhere within the hum of my minivan’s hybrid engine.

Thank you for buying a minivan.

I shook my head and inched slowly out of the station. I looked both ways, then looked again. And a slow, inescapable grin crept across my bearded face. A random bro just thanked me for buying a minivan. After all of my researching and soul-searching and falling in love with the Grumpy Toad and cheating on him with a Giant SUV and swinging back to a gansta minivan that got stolen and settling for the best available vehicle with glorious sliding doors, I’d finally found peace.

Any day in my minivan is a great day to be a Man.