America may have largely fallen out of love with the minivan, but here at Jalopnik, we stand by the superiority of the sliding rear door. It’s just better. And while it may be hard for some of our younger readers to understand, there was a time when minivans were actually popular. Popular enough that when Nissan redesigned the Quest for 2004, it had both the budget and the willpower to really swing for the fences. The 2004 Nissan Quest wasn’t just practical, either. It was proudly different and a little weird, and at the time, we didn’t appreciate that enough.
These days the ’04 Quest may look pretty pedestrian, especially considering its lack of screens, but if you weren’t there at the time, trust me when I tell you this thing was different. Here’s what Car and Driver said in its first drive, comparing Nissan’s minivan to the 350Z:
Just look at this thing. It’s clearly styled in a similarly striking hey-look-at-me vein with its broad wheels-at-the-corners stance and exaggerated headlamps and taillights connected by an arching roofline. Its interior looks like that of an Architectural Digest concept car. The seats are trimmed to look more like high-end furniture than car buckets, and the cylindrical center console, finished in a granite-look paint, could pass as a pedestal sink in an Ian Schrager Hotel suite bathroom. All interior materials look and feel upscale, and they all match or coordinate perfectly in terms of grain, sheen, and color. If the Z-car ranks as one of the most avant-garde sports cars on the roads today, this is most certainly the trendiest, chicest minivan.
The Nissan 350Z of minivans?
Of course, the folks at Car and Driver weren’t the only ones making the comparison to the 350Z. In the official press release, Nissan itself said:
Style is another key component of the new Quest, with both the dramatic, flowing exterior and “urban loft” themed interior designed to address consumer concerns about traditional minivans’ conservative imagery. And, as expected from the company behind the popular Nissan 350Z sports car, the new Quest offers responsive acceleration and handling from its standard 3.5-liter V6 engine and new 4-wheel independent suspension.
Granted, Nissan needed the V6 and the four-wheel independent suspension to compete with the Honda Odyssey that had come out five years earlier and kicked off a minivan arms race that the second-generation Quest couldn’t really compete with. But was it really the 350Z of minivans? Not really. It was simply too large and practical to really be fun to drive. As Car and Driver put it:
Actually, the van steers with commendable precision and the suspension keeps the tire contact patches firmly pressed to the road for a safe and stable-feeling ride. But this new Quest is big-no, huge. Dare we say gigantic? It’s roughly three to four inches longer and up to 4.2 inches taller than all the other big minivans, and it’s wider than all but the Chryslers. With that size comes mass-4520 pounds of it. Only fully loaded all-wheel-drive Chryslers and the Kia Sedona weigh more. Nimbleness and agility don’t come naturally to vehicles with that much inertia, and the extra weight snuffs out any power advantage that Z-motor might appear to have on paper.
That interior, though
While Nissan may not have changed the game with a truly sporty, fun-to-drive minivan, the real excitement was found inside the cabin. The round center console, centrally-mounted speedometer and central navigation screen got most of the attention, but you could also order the Quest with the optional four-panel Skyview roof that gave the second and third rows glass panels of their own, not just the driver and front passenger. Plus, you could get two optional roof-mounted screens and a DVD player if you were willing to cough up at least $1,500 for the privilege.
The Quest wasn’t all about flash at the expense of practicality, though. In addition to a disappearing third row, the second-row seats could also be folded into the floor, allowing you to turn your kid-hauler into a stuff-hauler with ease. Meanwhile, the best Honda offered on the Odyssey was a second row of seats that you could pull out of the van if you were strong enough. And you better believe Nissan was proud of that innovation at the time. Just think of all the stuff you could spontaneously buy!
“The result of our double row of folding seats is ‘complete spontaneity’ in how customers can use the interior of the 2004 Quest,” Nissan’s vice president and general manager Mark McNabb said at the time. “There’s no longer the need to plan ahead in removing seats prior to going shopping. Owners may purchase a large or bulky item on a whim and should be able to transport it home by simply folding down the seats.”
The third-generation Quest could get expensive if you loaded it up, with Car and Driver‘s tester coming in at $37,330 in 2003 dollars. Adjusted for inflation, that works out to a little more than $65,000. But hey, it was a different time. These days, a fully loaded minivan only costs… wait, you can spend more than $60,000 on a new Toyota Sienna? No wonder millennials don’t want to have kids.
Nissan
