My Favorite Ride: After 27 years and 338,873 miles, say good-bye to Joe Anderson's minivan

There’s a bit of sad news to report this week regarding Joe Anderson’s 1997 Chrysler Town & County minivan. If you recall, I wrote about it back in 2018 when the odometer crossed the 300,000-mile mark. “Meticulously maintained minivan” was in the headline.

Let’s just say I haven’t had one thought about this vehicle since then, not until Anderson contacted me recently with an update. He had been reading about my current series focused about cars on the road more than two decades and with more than a quarter million miles.

Alas, the Town & Country no longer qualifies because it’s no longer on the road.

“I was still driving that old minivan five years after the article was published,” Anderson said. “Never far from Bloomington and always with a bicycle inside in case it died. It never did, not once.”

The times he was left stranded were not the result of a mechanical malfunction, but his own fault. After locking the keys inside and calling his wife to rescue him, more than once, he taped a spare key to the rear wiper blade “to solve that old-age related driver problem.” He’s 80.

(An aside: To celebrate his 80^th birthday on Feb. 8, Anderson rode his bike on an 80-mile loop to Bean Blossom, Spearsville, Morgantown and then back to Bloomington on Low Gap Road. What are you going to do on your 80^th birthday?)

Anderson continued driving the minivan, referred to as the “Crodge” because it’s a Chrysler that has a Dodge replacement hood. The Chrysler was in the family for 26 years. Driven the whole time, really.

The Crodge was dependable. Would it last forever?

“All insurance except liability and road service had been canceled. It was not our primary vehicle and was used to shuttle me and my bicycle-riding friends to and from remote gravel and trail rides in the area. The muddy gravel roads and muddy bikes could do no damage to that old Crodge.”

Anderson and his wife bought the slightly used van, a dealership demo with 4,383 miles on it, to tow their new pop-top camper. During its first 300,000 miles, the van had more than $22,000 in maintenance and repairs. A 2016 collision with a deer totaled the van, but Anderson salvaged it and had it repaired for $1,600.

Sure, keeping an old vehicle on the road can be costly, but this van was like part of the family. Both of his grandchildren learned driving skills steering grandpa’s Town & Country around a church parking lot. “I continued maintaining both the vehicle and my repair spread sheet,” Anderson said.

Once it reached 300,000 miles, Anderson drove the van almost 40,000 miles more before he decided it was time to sell.

Keeping the van on the road those final 38,873 miles required spending another $2,228: a set of tires, new struts, brakes and wheel bearings, a transmission speed sensor and two oxygen sensors.

Anderson created a Super Bowl-type ad for a church viewing party in which he attempted to sell the van by listing its attributes and value as a 27-year-old collector vehicle. No buyer stepped up.

So, off to Auto Heaven it went. Anderson took a picture of the odometer, turned both key fobs over to Auto Heaven’s Chuck Forney and got $200 in return.

He called Auto Heaven the “church-appropriate resting place” for the van that for so long served his church-going family.

He sent me a few pictures taken his last day with the van. “The final photo is me and my bike with the best side of the van — the back side — with Auto Heaven in the background. Lots of different emotions were felt at that moment.”