Like the 2005 Chrysler Town & Country, the Dodge Caravan will benefit from a creative new seating system called "Stow 'n Go." Clever engineering enables the second- and third-row seats in extended-wheelbase minivans to fold up, forward, and flat, giving owners tremendous interior flexibility without removing the typically heavy and awkward seats. As a benefit, the underfloor seat storage bins offer significant storage space when the seats are upright in their passenger-ready positions. To accomplish this feat, the development team needed to dig into the floor pan and create an entirely new underbody, invent folding seats, and a load floor for the second-row seats. They also needed to design a new fuel tank, exhaust system, park brake cables, rear climate control lines, and modify the rear suspension. Cost for this new platform: $400 million. The result is a useful feature that will give the Chrysler brands a key competitive feature when they go on sale early 2004.
