In the fall of 1983, the first Dodge Caravans and Plymouth Voyagers rolled off the assembly lines and into the showrooms as 1984 models. The "T-115" minivan, derived from the K-platform FWD sedan, became one of the most influential vehicle designs of all time. The two individuals most responsible for bringing the minivan into the world are Lee Iaccoca, the CEO and public face of Chrysler Corporation at the time, and Hal Sperlich, who served under him as Vice-President of Styling and Product Planning.
But that wasn't the first experience these two gentlemen had with a minivan. Ten years earlier, when Lee Iaccoca was President of Ford and Hal Sperlich was its Director of Product Planning, one of their projects was the Ford Carousel, a prototype minivan that got tantalizingly close to production before being cancelled. So let's leap back in time to the Ford executive suite in 1973, and see what might have happened in an alternate universe where the first true minivan was the Carousel, rolling into Ford showrooms in the fall of 1974 as a 1975 model.
The Carousel was a derivative of the full-sized third-generation Econoline van, scheduled for introduction in the 1975 model year. The Econoline model range included a rather nicely-appointed "Club Wagon" passenger version. Lee Iacocca thought there might be a market for a smaller version of the Club Wagon, a "garageable" van that would have carlike driving dynamics while offering more room and utility than the then-typical Montana-class station wagon. Hal Sperlich, a longtime advocate of smaller cars and outside-of-the-box design, also saw the potential and got behind the idea.
Stylist Dick Nesbitt led the design team. They started with the frame and floorpan of the short-wheelbase (124") Econoline. The designers lowered the roofline, raked the side pillars forward, and replaced the back doors with a station wagon-style tailgate. Though the Carousel would still have required a significant investment, the reuse of the Econoline's frame, suspension, drivetrain, lower body structure, and miscellaneous bits such as the sliding door hardware, cut development costs because those parts were already designed, tooled, and paid for.
At this time, Chairman Henry Ford II, alias "Henry the Deuce," was the center of power at Ford. If he was behind a project, it went forward; if not, it was doomed. In the internal debate over the Carousel, Lee Iacocca and Hal Sperlich were encountering pushback from other Ford executives who were concerned that the Carousel would cannibalize sales from the up-market Ford Country Squire and Mercury Colony Park wagons. At every stage, Henry the Deuce sided with Iacocca and Sperlich--right up until he abruptly killed the project.
What happened? The 1973 oil price shock knocked the stuffing out of the American economy, Ford had a very bad year, and the Carousel was collateral damage. As Dick Nesbitt explained in a discussion thread on the Ford Motor Company News forum site, "Henry Ford II was most enthusiastic about the modest development costs and market share increases the Carousel would have achieved, but he pulled the plug on anything that wasn't a direct replacement for an existing product line during the deep recession of 1974."
What might have happened if Henry the Deuce, instead of getting all risk-averse, had decided that fortune favors the bold and gone ahead with Carousel? For gas mileage reasons, the base engine would probably have been a straight six or a smallblock V-8, but since the Carousel would have been lighter than the Econoline, performance would have been competitive by mid-70s standards. It would be introduced as an upmarket luxury wagon, but a "sedan delivery" with the side windows blanked would probably soon follow. Inevitably, someone would start fitting those out as boogie vans with waterbeds, shag carpeting, quadrophonic 8-tracks, and airbrushed murals.
If what happened with the T115s a decade later is any guide, the Carousel would have been a strong seller--not as wildly successful in the Nixon recession as the Chrysler minivans were in the Reagan boom, but certainly successful enough to justify the investment. The Carousel would have swiped some market share from the Country Squire and Colony Park, but it would have done the same to their competitors such as the Olds Vista Cruiser.
It's likely that Ford would have had the growing minivan market all to itself for at least a model year or two while the competition scrambled to catch up. (The history books tell us that designers over at Chrysler had hit upon the minivan idea at roughly the same time as the folks at Ford did, but never got it off the drawing board. Mopar upper management did not want to build a minivan because Ford and GM weren't building one!) Eventually, someone--probably someone at Toyota or Honda--would have realized that a transverse-mounted FWD drivetrain would fit comfortably into a minivan, and something very like the Caravan/Voyager would have emerged.
Had Ford been more innovative and more profitable in the middle 1970s, it's quite possible that Henry the Deuce and Lee Iaccoca would have had a better working relationship. If Lee Iaccoca and Hal Sperlich had stayed with Ford instead of being fired by Henry II, they wouldn't have been available when Chrysler was facing its darkest hour. It's hard to imagine anyone other than Lee Iaccoca being able to save Chrysler. In that alternate timeline, the soccer moms would all be driving Fords today, and we at Car Lust would be writing about how the Aspen and Volaré were the cars that killed Chrysler.
--Cookie the Dog's Owner
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