Let's have a nice hand for the marketing gurus at Pontiac, the vroom and zoom division of General Motors. They've made it OK for guys to drive minivans and still retain their manhood.
I am referring to those Pontiac Montana television commercials in which a bunch of tough-looking cowboys leap in and out of a speeding red minivan in a tightly choreographed ballet, one in which the dancers are wearing chaps instead of tutus.The driver is a dead ringer for the Marlboro Man, and his sidekick could stand in for The Outlaw Josey Wales. The commercial doesn't make much sense, but it moves fast, lassos fly, bad guys get their comeuppance, and we owe it all to the fact that the Pontiac's sliding door is power operated.
The implication is clear: If the posse had to manually open the minivan's sliding door, the West would not have been won and we'd all be living in New Jersey.
Or something like that. The underlying message in that 30-second spot is that there are no kids in the back, no soccer mom or henpecked dad at the wheel and nary a grocery sack anywhere in sight. The Pontiac Montana, the commercial makes clear, is not your mother's minivan. It's a rough-ridin' sport utility vehicle that just happens to look like a minivan.
I certainly held my head high during my week in the Montana's comfy captain's chair. Go ahead, I thought, giving a guy in a Plymouth Voyager my best Eastwood glare: Make my day. Talk about the power of advertising.
Image enhancement aside, the Pontiac Montana really is a minivan; pretty much a clone of its GM sibs, the Chevrolet Venture and Oldsmobile Silhouette.
But that's good news, not bad. Since GM retired its "Dustbuster" minivans (named for their uncanny similarity to the little vacuum) in 1997, and came out with the new mini trio, they have been giving serious competition to DaimlerChrysler's Voyager/Caravan/Town & Country triplets that have dominated the mini-wars since the 1980s.
Pontiac's attempt to position its Montana as a sport-ute rather than a minivan is not a bad idea. Other than image, minivans have a number of virtues not shared by SUVs. For example, to get the seven-passenger seating of the Montana, you have to buy one of the super-size sport-utes, such as a Chevy Suburban or Ford Expedition -- vehicles that cost more and have much higher operating costs.
Compared with the $42,000 price of last week's review car, the Ford Excursion, a fully equipped, extended-length, four-door (two sliders) Montana can grace your garage for around $26,000. And where Excursion gulps fuel at a rate of 12-13 mpg, the Montana is relatively thrifty at 18-25 mpg in city/highway travel.
Incidentally, while the curbside power sliding door may or may not have contributed to how the West was won, it's a real boon to small kids who haven't the strength to close a sliding door manually. It may be operated by a keyfob remote or a button on the B pillar, and it has a sensor that detects when a hand or leg is in
the way. The downside is that it requires too much pressure before it reverses back open when a small hand or leg is in the way.
My tester was equipped with GM's rear-seat entertainment system, first introduced last year on the Olds Silhouette. "MontanaVision" consists of a video cassette player (but not recorder) and a small (5.6 inches) LCD monitor that folds down from the overhead console. Headphone jacks for six (with individual volume controls) come with the system or it can be played over the audio surround sound system, assuming the occupants of the front seats can stand it. (The screen may be small but the sound is BIG!)
The system will also accommodate video game players, camcorders and laptop computers, turning the Montana into a family room cum office on wheels.
It almost seems incidental, but the 3.4-liter V6 engine does a nice job of powering the Montana and it handles amazingly well for such a tall vehicle. Freeway crosswinds, traditionally the minivan's mortal enemy, were no problem for the Pontiac, which also handled cornering chores with more grace than expected of any vehicle with the word "van" in its name.
Changes to the Montana for the 2000 model year are minimal. The instrument panel has been redesigned with three large, round gauges and a new message center, positioned below the tachometer, uses a dot-matrix display to inform the driver that the door is ajar or the oil needs changing.
A new odometer display reports total mileage plus two separate trip mileages. Nice touch: These can be reset retroactively to report mileage for the last engine-start cycle in case the driver forgets to reset immediately at the start of a trip.
Overhead reading lamps have been provided for middle-row passengers, and heated seats are now available (with the leather option) for the front buckets.
E-mail max@desnews.com or fax 1-801-236-7605. Max Knudson's car column runs each Friday.