Center row middle seat of Ody and ceiling seat belts in general

YinzerMama said:

So did the old skinny honda seat hide out in the floor somehow?

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Yes, it would stow in the floor in a compartment. The compartment came from moving the spare tire to under the vehicle. Now, the tire is back and the middle seat not stowable.

I really do think that the reason Toyota had such problems selling the 8 pass was that it didn't come in the higher level trim lines. Who wants an 8 pass? Parents! Parents don't want cloth seats, non-power doors, etc. They want easy to clean leather, power doors for car line drop off, etc.

I was really ticked that DH waited around telling me that the tranny wasn't going on the Ody - that I was just driving it too hard . When I first looked, there was a 2010 certified used 8 pass Sienna with only 10k miles on it and the package that included dual power doors just 1.5 hrs away. <sigh> Of course by the time he came to terms with it, it was gone and there were no 8 pass within 3 hrs of us.

ETA: The center headrest fits both me and DH (5'7" and 5'8"). There are probably taller people who won't fit.

You know what's funny, I was really hung up on wanting dual power doors for a while. Ours had the one. Non-powered trunk. Only reason the trunk would have been nice was so if a kid was in the back (my oldest) he could get in and out without me getting out. Anyway before the leak appeared - so in either 2009 or early 2010 - the dealership we were using for service sent out one of those "we want your vehicle" things and we went in to see what it would cost to get an 8 seater with 2 power doors. of course the offer looked great but they deducted for milage and even with low miles that adds up fast. So it would have cost us 10k to get a brand new one with power doors. My husband does not part with money easily and can be argumentative when it doesn't really serve him well. He told the dealer to kiss his a$$ and we walked out.

Funny that might have saved us a TON, had we known then what we know now.

In the end I came to like having one power and one non-power door and I don't know WHY I felt like I needed them now. I swear dealing with the leak for 2 years made me crazy.

Leather, I am split on. Always thought it was too fancy for kids, but then came to realize how many fluids kids produce. So we got leather couches for our living room. Love them. Leather for the car... great for potty accidents... but I do wonder about winter cold or summer heat. I will need a year to decide. We are having very mild weather now.

eta - I am going to have to remind him about that. :whistling:

Of course god only knows, THAT van might have exploded...

YinzerMama, I think I am going to become your stalker. Your Ody journey is quite entertaining.

But did Toyota really have trouble selling the 8 passenger or did they just not want to build many for some reason? I realize this is a tiny sample of experience, but when we bought ours, the dealer tried multiple times to convince us we really didn't need 8 seatsand should just take one of the many 7 seaters he already had. I had a friend who bought an 8 pass a couple of years later, and she said she had a similar experience. Just a thought anyway....

Although I wouldn't have been interested in it, I too think not offering the higher trims made very little sense.

jjordan said:

YinzerMama, I think I am going to become your stalker. Your Ody journey is quite entertaining.

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I'm completely insane.



I don't remember being talked out of the 8 seater but I do know the one place we looked only had it in green and brown. And the other place had blue. The green place offered us a lower price by $300 but noooooooooooooooooo, I HAD to have blue...

So they didn't try to talk me into a 7 - although they must have shown us one because I knew about the cap chairs going together - and they offered a "deal" on a loaded 07 which we turned down, being very practical - but I did sense there were more 7s than 8s.

But it was such a great car!!!

sirrahn said:

But did Toyota really have trouble selling the 8 passenger or did they just not want to build many for some reason? I realize this is a tiny sample of experience, but when we bought ours, the dealer tried multiple times to convince us we really didn't need 8 seatsand should just take one of the many 7 seaters he already had. I had a friend who bought an 8 pass a couple of years later, and she said she had a similar experience. Just a thought anyway....

Although I wouldn't have been interested in it, I too think not offering the higher trims made very little sense.

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I don't think they had a hard time selling it to consumers so much as to dealerships. Dealerships didn't think they would be popular so they ordered 7 passenger one. Once consumers get on the lot and are told that the dealer doesn't have any 8 passenger one, they just accept it.

i always thought the dealer just ordered the car you wanted if they didn't have it?

YinzerMama said:

i always thought the dealer just ordered the car you wanted if they didn't have it?

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They will, but that doesn't mean they won't try to talk you into what is on hand. It is expensive for them to bring in just one vehicle if it isn't going to be part of a larger shipment, and most people will just take what's on hand. Salemen are encouraged to get same day sales as often as possible, and people shopping for cars are very easily influenced in their excitement.

safeinthecar said:

They will, but that doesn't mean they won't try to talk you into what is on hand. It is expensive for them to bring in just one vehicle if it isn't going to be part of a larger shipment, and most people will just take what's on hand. Salemen are encouraged to get same day sales as often as possible, and people shopping for cars are very easily influenced in their excitement.

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Exactly. We were buying not long after the new model came out, and we ended up waiting months for our ordered 8 passenger while who knows how many 7 seaters were sold off of the lot.

That actually makes sense about it being a more dealer influenced thing. I guess I tend to forget that they choose their stock. The manufacturer doesn't just send them some of everything they offer.

Yeah I don't think about that either. I just picture the dealer gets a big ol' tractor trailer load of cars and it's like Christmas. Oooooh, what did I get??? And then you go and look. And if they don't have what you want, you order.

The first new car I bought was a Hyundai Elantra during a big sale so looking back I guess they had the one I wanted because they had a TON. DH's car is a Prius which we lucked out ridiculously on, we went in to order one (it was an 06 and orders too a while) and someone had JUST canceled on the exact one we wanted so we ended up driving it home. The vans, I figured places were sold out because they were popular, like any item at any store, and we just had to find a store that still had them in stock.

The new van, I thought I wanted blue but "dark cherry pearl" (which actually looks like a nosebleed that dried on a pillowcase) was a runner up. When we went in to actually buy I said I might want to take another look at dark cherry pearl to see if I still hated it and the dealer said "I hope you still hate it because that's the only color we don't have." Of course I figured if I really wanted I could order it but I didn't really want, so... But now I wish I had pretended I really did, we might have gotten more money off the blue, or maybe the roof rack thrown in...

sirrahn said:

But did Toyota really have trouble selling the 8 passenger or did they just not want to build many for some reason? I realize this is a tiny sample of experience, but when we bought ours, the dealer tried multiple times to convince us we really didn't need 8 seatsand should just take one of the many 7 seaters he already had. I had a friend who bought an 8 pass a couple of years later, and she said she had a similar experience. Just a thought anyway....

Although I wouldn't have been interested in it, I too think not offering the higher trims made very little sense.

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I think it is somewhat of a chicken and egg thing - cheaper models mean less $$ for the dealer. So, they of course want you to think you don't need the 8-pass, but this 7-pass that they can upsell with more feature packages and higher trim lines. Combine that with the lower production numbers (probably because they had two completely different interior floor plans - not like the 05-10 Odys where the 'plus one' was just stuck into the same floor plan as the 7 pass models) and they would rather sell you something that they could send you home with that day.

I may have to relieve myself by writing Toyota an angry letter about how poorly my second case manager handled my case and why we decided to go with Honda for the new van. I will tell them to do a quick google and see how much love there is for the OLD 8 passenger sienna.

They probably don't care but...

I know that to relieve myself sounds like peeing... not what I mean.

We were unable to find an 8-pass Sienna in 2007 within hundreds (I forget exactly how many) miles of us. The dealership did not want to deal with our "special request" so we bought the 5. I personally don't know anyone that wanted a 7-pass over an 8-pass but I know a couple families that decided it was more important to have leather than 8 seats.

My theory is that Toyota saw Honda doing well with a wimpy middle seat and fewer LATCH, so they went that way. Meanwhile Honda was eyeballing toyotas sales of decent center seat cars with LATCH almost everywhere and decided to go that way. Which is why I hope my next car is a Tonda. Or a Hoyota. Whichever I can get a better deal on.

YinzerMama said:

Yeah I don't think about that either. I just picture the dealer gets a big ol' tractor trailer load of cars and it's like Christmas. Oooooh, what did I get??? And then you go and look. And if they don't have what you want, you order.

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Nope. Not how it works at all. The dealer is a privately owned business that buys cars from manufactures and resells them at a profit.