I love cars. I love technology. Whenever my two loves meet, it’s a win-win situation for everyone. When I was invited to take the new Dodge Grand Caravan for an extended spin, I jumped at the chance.
Since we’re currently experiencing the seven-year itch with our current minivan, I was excited to find out what kind of technology this minivan had to offer.
I soon found out that the Caravan had so much technology, I had to sit in my driveway for 30-minutes just to fawn over and familiarize myself with everything.
Here are some of the tech highlights my family enjoyed the most.
I’ve been driving for a long time, and to this day the safety checks my driver’s ed course taught me happen automatically. However, having the vehicle equipped with additional safety features made me feel even safer while I was driving with my family. I really liked the Blind Spot Monitoring system, (affectionately referred to by my kids as “The Blind SpotBeep”), which was an excellent reminder of vehicles in the blind spots. And although I totally lucked out weather-wise during our test drive, secretly I was hoping that it would rain just a bit so that I could test out the rain sensitive wipers.
The Dodge Grand Caravan is also equipped with Park Sense rear park assist (which I soon found out was not an app for finding the local playground as I first thought), and a very cool Parkview Rear Back Up Camera. The rear back up camera was hard to get used to at first because I'm so old-school with shoulder-checks, but it is a great safety feature.
This minivan has more than 40 standard and available safety and technology features, including a Media Centre with a 28GB hard drive - I cannot tell you how much my family loved this. It featured a 6.5 inch touch screen media centre and SiriusXM Satellite radio.
I really hope Santa is reading this post because I loved the SiriusXM radio and want one in my car now.
And so there is NO chance of talking or texting while driving, the Grand Caravan has a Uconnect hands free communication system with Bluetooth streaming audio as well as a Garmin GPS Navigation which is voice activated.
Perfection.
For the passengers, there is a dual independent Blu-ray video entertainment system that can play two DVDs/Blu-ray discs simultaneously. Two screens, two kids, too awesome. Time spent "discussing" which video to watch on a long car ride has now been reduced to 0 minutes flat.
Hallelujah.
And let’s not forget the nine speakers with subwoofer. Hello, gorgeous.
Everything in this souped up Mom Taxi was comfortably at hand. With specific controls on the steering wheel to adjust the media, I had no problems blasting the tunes when Elvis came on, and turning them down when One Direction started to play (much to my teen girl’s chagrin). The 2nd row power windows were something we don’t have on our current minivan, and are a really nice option for passengers.
The auxiliary input for portable music devices was a big hit with my kids. We almost had to make a schedule for who got to plug their music into the system next.
The power dual sliding doors and liftgate have spoiled me forever.
With one click on the key fob or interior control button, doors opened and closed magically. This isn’t me being lazy and lamenting the lack of this in my current vehicle, this is me being the mom who always has her hands full with groceries, books, bags, a dog, and assorted kid’s gear, not to mention my phone. I adored the power doors on this van. Adored.
One of my favourite features was the One Touch Stow n’Go. Click one button, the back seats go down, go up, split 60/40 or completely flip over into a seat that’s perfect for a drive in movie or tailgate party.
I shot this quick video with my kids to show how easy this cool technology works with just the touch of a button:
The technology in the Grand Caravan met all of my expectations and more. This is definitely a vehicle that is made for families on the go and has something for everyone.
Find these stories and more on YMC's ‘Tales From the Minivan’ page.
This is proudly sponsored by our friends at Dodge Canada.
dodge.ca/grandcaravan
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