When ’80s Dodge Turbocharged the Caravan

"Turbo" is one of those words that inserted itself into our lexicon and gained a meaning that goes far beyond technical accuracy. Most gearheads recognize that a turbo is a mechanical device that harnesses the energy of fast-flowing exhaust gasses via a turbine wheel to force more air into an engine. But to the layperson, especially in the 1980s, the word "turbo" simply meant "fast," and it could be applied to anything, even your enormous desktop computer, whose turbo button helped it run Prince of Persia slightly better.

Car manufacturers soon realized that slapping a spoolie boy under the hood and a turbo badge on the back was a great way to market higher-performance versions of their cars. Buyers cared far less about an engineering breakdown than they did about decals, some cool graphics, and maybe a boost gauge. In the '80s, the mystique of "turbo" sold a lot of coupes, sport sedans, and . . . a minivan?

"People kept coming up to me and saying, 'I used to have one of these! I never knew they came with a turbo," says Jonathan Corrigan, owner of this 1989 Dodge Caravan SE. Having brought it along to a local car show, the annual Langley Good Times Cruise-In in British Columbia, he was fairly mobbed by show-goers, who were surprised to see a minivan at a mostly hod-rod event, let alone one with a turbo script on its fenders.

According to Corrigan, this entirely original and unrestored Caravan is the lowest mileage example anyone in the Mopar enthusiast community anyone seems to know about, with the equivalent of just 55,000 miles on its odometer. It is no preservation-class, Pebble Beach-winning Bugatti, but it is nevertheless an interesting time capsule. Reading the same word on a boxy Dodge van as you would on a whale-tail Porsche 911 is just wonderful. Tremendous stuff, Mr. Iacocca.

If the drama of the turbo badges doesn't tickle your funny bone, huck this lunchbox down an empty street. While it is not fast, the van is alarmingly quick. There's a disconnect between the burgundy velour and family-friendly triple row seating, and the hiss of boost from underhood. It's like strapping two bottle rockets to a McDonald's Happy Meal and lighting the fuse.

With skinny 14-inch wheels, no ABS, and a nearly complete lack of options keeping the curb weight down (no air-conditioning, roll-up windows, not even an adjustable steering wheel), this is like the Caravan Turbo Superleggera. Driving it is hilarious: There's zero feedback from the steering but great visibility and a tight turning circle. In Corrigan's van, a pair of big fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview just adds to the charm. This is a van with some cojones.

Chrysler launched its minivan for the 1984 model year, though the idea had been floating around long before that. All through the 1970s, vans from Dodge and Plymouth (both owned by Chrysler) had been popular with consumers, whether as work trucks or as statement pieces, their sides perhaps decorated with a giant mural of a unicorn fighting a dragon. The thought of producing some kind of scaled-down version that could fit in a garage was lobbed around from time to time, but the product wasn't realized until Lee Iacocca came around.

When Iacocca came aboard, after being fired as the president of Ford, he greenlit the front-wheel-drive minivan project despite Chrysler's tricky financial position. Originally, the two engine offerings were a wheezy, 96-hp 2.2-liter shared with the likes of the Aries and a 2.6-liter V-6 sourced from Mitsubishi. With 104 hp, its output was barely any better.

Fully loaded with kids or luggage for the summer family vacation, a Dodge Caravan or Plymouth Voyager had all the pace of a Conestoga prairie schooner. The pair was still popular, because when it first went on sale, most customers placed a higher focus on fuel efficiency than on power. Later in the '80s, however, the Caravan needed more power and especially more torque.

The answer was sitting right next to the Caravan in Dodge showrooms in the form of the Omni GLH and Daytona Turbo. Chrysler would squeeze a surprising amount of performance out of its turbocharged 2.2- and 2.5-liter four-cylinder engines, even calling on Carroll Shelby to lend a hand (and his last name). Simple in layout, the turbo Dodges were both very tuneable and potent right out of the box. The Spirit sedan, for instance, was just a front-wheel-drive followup to the humble Aries, but in R/T form it had enough straight-line speed to smoke a BMW M5.

Turbocharging a minivan wasn't meant to add sportiness but simply to improve the Caravan and Voyager's ability to haul people and their stuff. A 150-hp, 2.5-liter turbocharged four-cylinder with 180 lb-ft of torque became an option for the 1989 model year, paired with either a three-speed automatic or a five-speed manual transmission. Especially with the former, it was sort of a disaster.

Lag is part of the fun of a turbocharged performance car, and those from the 1980s and 1990s have far more boosty character than the 2.0-liter turbo fours you find in almost everything these days. In the old stuff, the lack of refinement adds a thrill. Many turbocharged engines are so bland that they might as well power your dishwasher.

Thing is, most minivan buyers actually want an appliance. What Chrysler really needed-and what its vans eventually got-was a smooth, torquey V-6. You still get six-cylinder power in some modern minivans, and the configuration is ideal for highway cruising.

The turbo Caravan, on the other hand, bucked and surged, and the three-speed auto often upshifted early and out of the powerband. The turbo option only lasted two model years, and that was it. Most people forgot it ever existed.

But 35 years later, a turbocharged Dodge Caravan is a wonderfully deranged thing. Corrigan picked this remarkable Canadian model up on Facebook Marketplace a few years ago, where it was just listed as a plain old Caravan. The turbocharged models were uncommon to begin with, and since so many Caravans and Voyagers were used up and thrown away, they have only gotten harder to find. They're one of the ultimate oddball collectibles, though they're hardly priced like one. A similar turbo Caravan with unknown mileage sold last fall on Bring a Trailer for $13,000, and a museum-quality LE with the later, 3.3-liter V-6 nearly hit $20,000.

That's only part of the story when it comes to the second life of the turbo Caravan: People absolutely love tuning these minivans into Mustang-destroying dragstrip monsters. Throw enough boost and fuel at that motor, and you don't even need to remove the heavy bench seats to get this thing through the timing lights quicker than a V-8-powered Fox-body. There are currently turbo Caravans running around that'll do the quarter mile in the mid-10-second range. Lunacy!

Corrigan has no such plans to mess with his well-preserved find, especially as it's already a hoot to drive. He takes it to shows and people grin to see it, remembering the childhood family truckster and marveling that Chrysler ever got so crazy as to make one with a turbocharged powerplant. We're glad they did.