Chrysler Town & Country Review

At the begin­ning of the month, we had the oppor­tu­nity to check out a Chrysler Town & Coun­try for a lit­tle more than a week– call it a fam­ily of 5 vehi­cle search of sorts! In fact, had Baby Brother come just a cou­ple of days sooner (or we had the van a cou­ple days longer), we could have actu­ally tried it as a fam­ily of 5! Crazy!

To say that we were totally spoiled by all the van’s fea­tures dur­ing the week is an under­state­ment! Just as I pre­dicted, the boys won­dered where the “new car” went after we had to part ways! LOL! It had so many more bells & whis­tles than we’re used to. But, just like with any vehi­cle there are def­i­nitely pros & cons and per­sonal pref­er­ences. So, I thought I’d share with you all of our thoughts after dri­ving around the Chrysler Town & Coun­try for over a week!

Our thoughts:

First off, the van was really easy to drive!  It was a very smooth & quiet ride. Obvi­ously, that’s a BIG, impor­tant piece when look­ing for a new car and I was thrilled to be totally com­fort­able dri­ving it around town! We even did an IKEA haul in it!! The seats were com­fort­able (though in the hot Ari­zona sun, I actu­ally didn’t love the leather. It got super hot!); there were lots of great cup holder options (that actu­ally kept the cups secure–I hate it when cup hold­ers don’t fit cups well and they tip over!); and there was an awe­some cen­ter con­sole thing between the two front seats–perfect for drinks, stor­age, phones, etc.

Right off the bat, I noticed some of the fea­tures while in the driver’s seat that I loved…like the dig­i­tal dis­play on the dash, show­ing the speed, tem­per­a­ture, mileage, etc. I seri­ously LOVED this!! It was so much eas­ier mon­i­tor­ing speed this way & I loved hav­ing all the other info there too! Very nice! And, speak­ing of mon­i­tor­ing, the side mir­rors fea­ture blind spot mon­i­tor­ing. Every time some­one was in my blind spot, a lit­tle orange tri­an­gle lit up on the mir­rors and there was a lit­tle audi­ble “bing”. Love this!

I also absolutely loved the rear back-up cam­era! I hate park­ing any­way and I’m always wor­ried that I won’t see some­thing behind me. So, this was a super awe­some fea­ture to have. All this mon­i­tor­ing things make the car seem so much safer & me more com­fort­able when driving.

The boys cer­tainly enjoyed the car too. For them though, I think the whole excite­ment cen­tered around the DVD sys­tem. Both sets of grand­par­ents have vans with DVD play­ers, but it was a nov­elty to have it in “our car”. They were so excited to ride in the Town & Coun­try because of that.

While the boys loved this, we actu­ally didn’t love this fea­ture. GASP! I know, some of you prob­a­bly think I’m crazy. It’s a really cool system–with the dual play­ers, head­phones, and even a place to hook up game sys­tems. And, down the road, I think we’d prob­a­bly def­i­nitely love a fea­ture like this. But, while the kids are so young, we just found it com­pletely unnec­es­sary. They get so much screen time as it is that I didn’t like hav­ing that temp­ta­tion in the car all of time. Plus, I wouldn’t like hav­ing to tell them “no” to watch­ing a movie every time we get in the car to run sim­ple errands. So, while the stan­dard enter­tain­ment fea­tures are cer­tainly WAY nice, it just isn’t right for our fam­ily right now.

What is per­fect for our fam­ily though, is the Stow ‘n Go. It’s super nice to have extra stor­age in the car and awe­some that all the seats can just fold down. No hav­ing to take out bulky seats in order to get some extra room!

The way the bucket seats fold up is super con­ve­nient too. How­ever, they do NOT move like that with car seats in them. They don’t move for­ward at all. So, to access the back row of seats you would have to go around (in front of) the bucket seats. With 3 kids and hav­ing to access kid­dos in each row, I didn’t think that was very con­ve­nient. I’ve seen some other vans in which the bucket seats can be recon­fig­ured so that the bucket seats are right next to each other (leav­ing a space open next to the door to get to the back). There’s no way to do that in the Town & Coun­try. So, the only solu­tion we could come up with for easy access to all is the set-up below (which is cer­tainly work­able & much more con­ve­nient to do with the stow n’ go seats). Do any of you have 3 car seats in a Town & Coun­try? What is your configuration?

Over­all, the Chrysler Town & Coun­try def­i­nitely has a lot of perks and would def­i­nitely a nice vehi­cle for a fam­ily of 5 (or larger)! We really enjoyed dri­ving the car while we had it and check­ing every­thing out.

Do any of YOU drive a Chrysler Town & Coun­try? What are your favorite features?

You can check out more from Chrysler on Face­book and Twit­ter: @ChryslerAutos.

Dis­clo­sure: I was given a Town & Coun­try by Chrysler to drive for one week for the pur­pose of review. This post is part of a Chrysler spon­sor­ship. All opin­ions and expe­ri­ences are my own.