Sure, a minivan might be great for the big families, but 80% of the time I see one, only one or two people are in them, and no cargo.

In my case, it was $2000 for one which was at the time 8 years old when I needed to buy something quickly, and then I didn't have money for another car, or the desire to be a 2 car family, until this past March. In the 5 years since then I guess we've put something like 130000 miles on it.

When we got to the point where a second vehicle got to be interesting, I made sure we got a car (for $2000 ). Most of the time we don't use the minivan, now. The gas mileage isn't nearly as good as I'd like, but it's still useful to have something which I can move a railroad interlocking machine, more than 4 people, or space for myself to sleep in certain circumstances, and it still works, so...