Nice review.
We cross-shopped the Entourage against the Honda Odyssey and bought the Odyssey instead. In our particular case, the biggest factor was poor treatment at the two closest Hyundai dealerships. But aside from that:
- The Odyssey seats were slightly more comfortable. They also offered more leg room in the first row. I'm 6 feet tall but a lot of my height is legs and I'm fat, so in the Entourage (and the Nissan Quest, and a few other minivans) my knees were too close to the dashboard for me to be comfortable on long trips. The Odyssey was better, I've managed ten hour drives in comfort.
- The Odyssey handled better. Handling isn't really important for a minivan, but the Odyssey feels surprisingly agile for its size.
- Most comparison tests put their speed times as close enough to be insignificant, but seat-of-the-pants feel was that the Odyssey has plenty of power but the Entourage is noticeably faster.
- The Entourage is only available, if I remember right, in a 2/2/3 seating configuration. The Odyssey has 2/3/3 and each of the second row seat portions can be removed. If you take out the middle second row seat, which is the smallest, and slide one of the other seats in its place, then access to the third row seats is easy. If you leave the middle second row seat in, it's more difficult to access the third row of the Odyssey than the Entourage.
Since I'm most of the way through a review anyway: we get 18 mpg in mostly city driving, 22 on mostly highway, and 25 on long trips. That's all calculated by dividing miles driven by gallons of gasoline purchased when we fill the van. We haven't had any repairs yet in 2 years and 37,000 miles of ownership.
Problems:
1. Road noise is very bad. It's hard to hear people in the second and third row when you're driving down the highway.
2. Some of the seat belts in the back lock up frequently, and you have to return them to start position before the tension relaxes and you can extend them out again. It's a pain in the neck when you have a child seat with a seat belt threaded through, and you have to completely unhook the seat belt, return it to the beginning position, and then thread it back through.
3. The engine drones very loudly between 1300 and 1400 RPM. It's not a serious problem, but I'm amused that GM used to catch all sorts of flack for 'unrefined' pushrod engines and the first car I have with this problem comes from Honda. The engine is supremely smooth everywhere else in the rev range, though - and I have run it up to the rev limiter a few times when I was driving by myself.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LAMRONH
Call me a fuddy duddy, I think I'd opt for manual doors, even not hearing of your problems with the electrics.
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We opted for the power doors because our kids were toddlers when we bought the minivan. We had vans with manual sliding doors when I was growing up, and we had the occasional broken finger, or a cut or bruised arm, leg, or head.
I don't regret the decision, the Odyssey's doors have started to close on us or one of the kids more than once and then immediately stopped and reversed when they hit the resistance.
If all of your kids are well past toddler age, I would probably go with manual sliding doors too.