One thing to love about minivans are the second-row seats. They’re easy to access, thanks to the big sliding doors on each side. And every minivan offers at least one second-row design with some sort of party trick. The non-hybrid Chrysler Pacifica‘s Stow ‘N Go seats fold into the floor. The Honda Odyssey‘s outboard seats slide not only fore and aft, but inboard and outboard, while its middle seat can be easily removed. The Kia Carnival has luxurious VIP Lounge seats or what we dubbed “Captain Kirk chairs.”
You can read about all the Sienna’s available second-row seat setups in our 2023 Sienna review, but let’s take a deep dive into the ultimate option: the Super Long Slide second-row seats with built-in leg rest that are found in our long-term 2023 Toyota Sienna Platinum. They make for very comfortable passengers. When you don’t have passengers, they allow you to make the most of the cargo space without having to remove the seats entirely.
Let’s check ’em out.
These seats can slide forward and back a total of 25 inches. Above, I have the seat at a normal position, a good balance for second-row comfort while still allowing for passengers in the third row. If you look close, you’ll see three handles along the side of the seat. This can get confusing. The bottom one unlocks the seat to slide freely. The lever above it adjusts the angle of the seatback, while the one higher up on the actual seat cushion deploys the footrest.
Here, the seat is slid as far back as it will go, providing tons of legroom, perfect for busting out that ottoman and kicking up your feet.
The seat bottom is shaped to partly slide past the intrusion from the wheel well, allowing that great range of motion.
This is as far as the second-row seat will move forward in its normal position. There’s more track that it could move forward along, but it’s blocked by the driver’s seat.
If you really want to squeeze it forward to provide more cargo space behind it, you can fold the seat cushion up with the same lever you use to fold the seatback forward. That gives you the most possible room behind the seat.
Another feature that allows such mobility of the seats is the integration of the seatbelt into the shoulder of the seatback. Just be careful, though: that housing can give your cranium a good wallop when folding up the seat. Yes, at least one forehead was harmed in the making of this review.
The Super Long Slide seats are standard in all Sienna trims but the base LE, and the ottomans come in the 25th Anniversary Edition, Limited and Platinum trims. You can take a closer look at the Sienna’s sliding second-row seats in this video, or, for much better production quality, in Editor-in -Chief Greg Migliore’s walkaround of our long-termer, below. The seat discussion starts at the 5:17 mark.
