Kia Sedona?

Pros? Cons?

I will likely only need at max two top tethers, so no worries on those.

What are safety ratings like compared to other vans?

As much as I would love a new Sienna or Oddy, that will likely not be in the cards. The kia would be almost $8k less for brand new.

I have a 2008 Kia Sedona that we got used with 24,000 miles on it. It had been a rental. It was priced the same an older Oddy with 80,000 miles on it on the same lot. It was an easy choice! I love the Sedona! I actually like that it does not have all the bells and whistles. Our doesn't anyway. We do not have power doors but after having a broken power door on our last van, I'm good with that. Broken doors are MUCH more difficult to open. I'm sure you can get one with DVD player but we did not want that and I was happy to find a van without. Ours has three full sets of LATCH, both captain's chairs and one in the 3rd row (passenger side I think), there is a top tether on drivers side in the 3rd row, none in the center. I am not sure if they have changed things since the '08 model.

One down side of Kia that we have found is that it can be difficult to get parts from a non-dealer. It was rather expensive to have it worked on where we bought it. Thankfully, a smaller and much less expensive Kia dealer opened here in town so no more driving further and paying more. I am not sure if the parts thing is still an issue as we really like and trust this local dealer so I have not tried going elsewhere since they opened a 4ish years ago. We have not had any mechanical issues at all and ours now has over 85,000 miles on it.

We have a 2008 Sedona as well. I'm not sure what changes have been made to the current generation. But we're very happy with our van, which we've had about 1.5 years. The cost really made it a no-brainer, considering that for the same amount of money we could get a Sienna or Odyssey that was about 5 years older and with 50k more miles, or the Sedona that we ended up with. Even if it does end up with more repairs (which it may or may not, since Sedonas have a good reliability rating too), you can pay for a LOT of repairs with the money that we saved.

We did have the front brake rotors replaced recently and the mechanic apologized for the part being "expensive," but it was still only like $125 so not a big deal. I don't know what "not expensive" rotors cost, but we thought the repair was completely reasonable.

I have a 2006 Sedona with almost 130k miles I bought it with 97k 2 years ago. It goes through headlight bulbs very fast and they are not fun to change. I've had a couple of warning lights come on I'm pretty sure the dealer was trying to suck us dry, problems where resolved cheaply after shady diagnosis. I need to try a different dealership.

Mine has 4 sets of LATCH, seats any combo of 6 people I've thrown at it so far. Once 2 friend's ditched me with their kids I carried 6 kids in it. Adults as tall as 6' 4" have comfortably ridden in the first 2 rows.

We did front breaks a year ago and rear breaks last month. It wasn't expensive compared to the break jobs on our Olds or Jetta. The headlights do need more frequent changing, and it is a pain, but we set ours to be on if the van is running and I believe it is much safer to drive with headlights on even in daylight, so I deal.