With the end of the Chrysler 300, the house that Walter P. built will have but two vehicles on sale in the U.S. until 2025. One of those, the Voyager minivan, is only available to fleets. The other is the Pacifica minivan. Automotive News‘ crystal ball predicts the standard and PHEV models will get minor updates next year. Chrysler brand CEO Christine Feuell recently spoke to media like the Windsor Star (Stellantis’ Windsor Assembly Plant in Canada builds the Pacifica) about what’s ahead for the segment Chrysler created and the automaker’s sole offering to the car-buying public.
Calling it a “midcycle action plan,” Feuell said, “We’ll be doing a refresh on the Pacifica, and it will be more than just a moderate refresh. It will be pretty significant. … I’m not at liberty to say what year that will come out. It will be some point after we launch the first new BEV product.”
Let’s start with the timing, considering the mention of the coming electric crossover. Feuell also told the audience that Chrysler will be a “one-product brand for about a year.” Allowing healthy latitude for the “about” in that sentence, this suggests the battery-electric crossover presaged by the Airflow would go on sale in the first half of 2025. That could put a significantly remade Pacifica on the market in the middle or late portion of 2025.
With the Pacifica having been on sale since the 2017 model year, a significant refresh eight years later sounds like a page from the Dodge muscle car playbook. That worked for the Charger and Challenger, there’s no reason it can’t work for a minivan, according to segment data. The CEO said North American buyers have pushed the minivan sector up 40% this year, recovering from supply constraints last year. Dealers moved 112,198 Pacificas through the first three quarters of 2023. That not only smashes last year’s total of 98,624, it’s the first time the ur-van has crested six figures in the U.S. since 2018, when a record 118,322 buyers took still-new Pacificas home. Now that more stability has come to the market, Feuell said internal forecasts show “the segment increasing probably 15 to 20 percent next year and then settling into a pretty consistent run rate through 2030.”
No idea what’s coming for the midcycle refresh, but we have a tingling sensation it will be a lot more techie than the current model. Chrysler will want to make clear connections between the Pacifica, the electric crossover, and a third Chrysler model scheduled for 2026, and perhaps hint at what’s possible in a battery-electric Pacifica reportedly due around 2028. The brand boss is already making connections to Tesla, her competition benchmark for technology and buyers.
“The plug-in hybrid [Pacifica] and the Tesla Model Y are often cross-shopped against each other,” Feuell said. “We think the technology and a more modern design profile, making sure that the products sold under the Chrysler brand continue to be positioned toward the mainstream customer segment, position us really well for future growth.”
