Fun fact: Dodge wasn’t the first to make a van called the Caravan. The Nissan Caravan has been around for a while, and some of them look pretty dope.

By Bill Hayward

Nissan Caravan Beeline concept.
Nissan Caravan Beeline Concept, displayed by Nissan at the 2002 Tokyo Motor Show. Photo: Nissan Global Newsroom

Brand trademarks, even in a single product category, don’t always maintain uniqueness across international lines. The Dodge Caravan nameplate has become nearly synonymous with minivans. But Dodge wasn’t the first automaker to build a van called a Caravan. Before the Dodge Caravan, there was the Nissan Caravan, which was not a minivan but rather a full-size van.

There is no connection between the Nissan and Dodge vehicles carrying the Caravan nameplate, and there never has been.

On the Dodge side, the first Dodge Caravan minivans rolled of the assembly line in 1983 as 1984 models, while the first Nissan Caravan was produced in 1973.

Unlike the Dodge Caravan, which was designed from the ground up to be a vehicle for everyday chores like getting groceries, carting kids to sports practices, and keeping families comfy for roadtrip vacations, the Nissan Caravan is designed primarily for commercial use.

Powered by a four-cylinder engine throughout its history, the Nissan Caravan has been marketed primarily in the Asia-Pacific region, which is the likely explanation for why brand confusion with the Dodge Caravan has not been an issue to speak of in the North American market.

From a design perspective, the Nissan Caravan has gone through some widely varying iterations across its six generations of production.

The first generation, with abundant window glass on the sides and sliding side doors, is somewhat reminiscent of some classic U.S. full-size vans of the 1960s and 1970s, like the Dodge A100.

First-generation Nissan Caravan. Photo by Tennen-Gas (WikiMedia Commons, Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license).

In our admittedly subjective perspective, the most interesting iteration was the Beeline concept, shown in the feature photo for this article. Nissan, displaying the van at the 2002 Tokyo Motor show, billed the Beeline concept van as “a next-generation mobile business station.”

It was a cool look in a novel, funky sort of way, with a vibe that was retro yet somewhat techy at the same time. The beeline would, for example, be great as a branded service vehicle for a mobile IT support business along the lines of The Geek Squad.

During the same exhibition, Nissan also launched an appealing delivery-van version with a distinctive “roof window” intended to make it “easy to see building signboards and overhead traffic lights from the driver’s seat,” according to a Nissan press release from 2002.

Nissan Caravan Delivery Version concept from the 2002 Tokyo Motor Show. Photo: Nissan Global Newsroom.

The flanged outline of the roof with the window inset has a cap-like appearance, giving the vehicle somewhat of a resemblance to camper vans with pop-up sleeper areas at the top. That’s not too surprising considering that the Nissan Caravan has in fact been used as a platform for camper van conversions.

If you’re a U.S. buyer looking for a van and have a taste for something different, a used Nissan Caravan could be worth a look. Though never marketed domestically, there is some availability of used Nissan Caravans as JDM (Japanese Domestic Market) imports to the U.S.

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