Who needs a minivan anymore? SUVs are much cooler, and you can get them now with third-row seats, DVD systems, and many other nods to settled suburbanites. "Crossovers" like the new Chrysler Pacifica go a step further, with refined sedanlike handling and a touch of attitude. Then there are a growing number of alternative vehicles like the Honda Element, clever oddballs that announce that every people-hauler doesn't have to be a cookie-cutter sell-out to conventionality.

The '04 Sienna is a rejoinder to all that. It is unabashedly a minivan, a pure play for the hearts and minds of the coaches and den mothers who are secure enough about their parental place in the world not to care a whit about their juice-stained image.

But the Sienna also wants you to think it has a soul, or at least a personality, like the organization man who wears an indistinguishable dark suit and tie on the 8:15 to work every morning but every now and then lets loose over cocktails and dancing. Start with the exterior. The hump-backed shape of the previous Sienna is long gone, replaced by a more angular physique that looks fairly athletic for its size. Under the hood there's a 230-horsepower V-6 engine, standard on all trim lines, that complements the chiseled design and shows a lot of chutzpah compared with the school-bus-style performance you get from some minivans. It's a bit squishy off the line, but once it kicks in there's as much pickup as you'd ever want with your kids in the car.

Inside, the Sienna makes a pass at being stylish, but there's really only one focus: practicality. There's a cupholder near virtually every surface you could conceivably rest your arm on. I tried to count all the storage compartments, but they're tucked away in so many unannounced recesses–inside the door-mounted armrests, underneath the passenger seat–that I was sure I'd missed a few. Many other features are borrowed from the competition. That includes the overhead baby mirror that lets the driver see the kids in the back seat (first seen on the Ford Windstar) the fold-flat third-row seat (a "wow" feature when it debuted on the Honda Odyssey a few years ago), and windows on the sliding doors that actually go down (credit the Mazda MPV). The Sienna is more than just a greatest-hits collection of minnovations, though. Execution is polished and thorough. One way to get to the third-row seat, for instance, is to pull a strap behind one of the middle-row buckets, which sends the seat floating forward with just the right amount of spring. And there are numerous configurations that let you fold down any or all of the seats, depending on your hauling/chaufeurring needs. That's the price of admission on minivans these days, but Toyota has done it quite smoothly, with only a few simple maneuvers required (once you've studied the manual). That's the kind of functionality that still gives minivans an edge over other family chariots.

The Sienna doesn't deliver miracles, however. The catchy looks deceive, for one thing–the Sienna's handling is heavy-handed, with a lumbering feel on curves and corners. Steering is soft and overpowered, and the driver doesn't get much feel for the road. On highways I found myself overcorrecting the steering a lot to counter the vehicle's inertia going into curves. That often produced the kind of uncomfortable sideways tilting that's typical with high-center-of-gravity vehicles. To be fair, the Sienna is a large hauler that seats seven in copious comfort, and its road manners are better than others of like size. But there are still tradeoffs that come with minivans. They're easier to make, however, when the payoff is more practicality than a Swiss army knife.