Why do you love your Toyota Sienna?

[gungirl65]

I've been minivan shopping since the beginning of the month. I thought I had narrowed it down to a Honda Odyssey until tactical fat suggested I take another look at the Toyota Sienna.

The Toyotas almost sound more impressive than the Hondas.

So I would like to hear from all Toyota Sienna owners, what do you like and dislike about your Toyota Sienna?

What trim package do you have? Are you happy with it or do you wish you would have upgraded?

If you had it to do over again, would you buy the same minivan again?

 

[hoosierdoc]

We have a 2010 sienna xle awd. Absolutely love it. Bought used in 2012. Currently it has 194k miles and drives like a dream.

i’d buy It again. Considered the odyssey way back when but wanted the AWD

 

[avboiler11]

Wife has a 2015 SwaggerWagon LE. Didn’t want XLE trim/leather, but the auto liftgate would be helpful.

Like the Sienna a lot, VERY comfortable around town and on long trips, and is better looking IMO than the Odyssey.

 

[KittySlayer]

Honda vs. Odyssey

Not minivans but just some observations from a non-mechanical guy driving vehicles.

Our family has been happy with the long term performance of Honda products. My wife is on her fourth Honda in over two decades (Accord, CRV, Pilot, CRV). She put a 100k on her first CRV and her mom and dad are still driving it after two decades. She put 100k on her Pilot then my son put another 100k on the Pilot and he sold it to a friend that is still driving it and is still a friend. My Acura RSX (=Civic) had a 100k and I sold it to my son who is still driving it after a decade.

A couple years ago I got a Toyota pickup. No problems at all, I am very happy. I would put it on the same level as the Honda for build quality, features, comfort, value, performance.

So after all that, I would happily buy another Honda or Toyota, pick what fits your pocketbook and style. After having been faced with expensive failures and poor build quality of Ford, Chrysler, and GM I would not buy another no matter how good of a job they tell me they are doing today. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

 

[dvd1955]

Had a 2006 sienna. My wife loved it and insisted we get another last year. The '06 had 232k miles and still runs great. Gave it to our daughter/son-in-law, as they just had a baby, and a year later they still love it. Now on to the new one. It is the lower end model, as was the '06, as neither of us cares about bells and whistles much. We bought a 2017 with 45k on the odometer. I have to tell you this is the first vehicle we've had with the fancy screen in the dash, and we both hate that. Unfortunately, they seem to have decided that the driver distractions from having to search through menus on a touch screen is safe, even though we keep hearing driver distraction is a bad thing. We looked at Toyota, honda and Chrysler, and thought the Toyota interface was a little more intuitive for us. I would suggest trying them out in both the Honda and the Toyota before you decide, to see which makes more sense to you. The backup camera is great, but iirc, they all had that.

The nav system on the lower end model is horrid. You have to load their app on your phone to use it, and it uses your phone's data. We both have Samsung Galaxy 4 phones, and as of early this year, they are no longer compatible with the Toyota app. It may be worth getting an upgrade just for that if you depend on nav systems a lot.

And we both feel like the engine has been neutered. The '06 was pretty quick on acceleration, the '17 is anemic. It has two modes, but I can't see any performance or fuel economy differences between the two modes.

I would not rule out either the Honda or Toyota just based on price. If you have to pay a few thousand more for a Honda, and like it better, I say go for it. You may regret not getting what you really wanted. And you should recoup some of that difference when it comes time to sell it.

Happy hunting.

 

[BoilerWes]

We had an AWD Sienna XLE. It was nice and reliable as you would expect a Toyota product. One thing to keep in mind on the AWD is they have run flat tires. This sounds nice...however we did not have much luck in the longevity department and had to replace after 20k miles (this was with Toyota scheduled maintenance as far as rotation). Run flat replacements were going to run about $1k. I did some more research and this seemed to be the norm for this type of tire, although some have improved since then.

We recently chose a Chrysler Pacifica over a new Sienna and Odyssey. Although I can’t speak of its long term reliability, it is a pleasure to drive. Fit and finish on the inside are great. I would choose to drive it every day of the week over the Sienna.