2026 Chrysler Pacifica Pinnacle Review: Top of the Line, But Past Its Peak

There was a time when every half-ton pickup or seven-seat utility vehicle that ended up on my test schedule would elicit a groan. Another boring commuter car. Great. Young Byron just wanted to schedule track time and carve corners, not count cup holders or test comfort features. But these days, my hobbies are more diverse and my weekends are filled with projects, like an old home and an aging fun car that both need almost-constant attention. These days, I get equally excited by big wings and big beds—and yes, even cavernous family cars.

I had big plans for this Chrysler Pacifica, plans involving 4×8 sheets of OSB and insulating foam, and possibly even some ten-foot wall plates. But for the second year in a row, winter came on fast and strong here in Southeast Michigan, and my material ended up a solid block of ice. You think pressure-treated lumber is heavy already? Try dunking it and freezing it. Sometimes, life throws you curveballs.

And honestly, that’s probably how a lot of people become minivan owners. The seven-passenger MPV peaked as a concept in the 1990s and has been in decline virtually ever since—at least until recently. Younger Gen-Xers and older Millennials grew up riding in them, and there’s no shortage of us who remember them somewhat fondly. Sure, our parents may have been shamed into replacing them with crossovers and SUVs as they became almost fatally uncool after the turn of the new millennium, but as much as it may shock you, those former third-row occupants have kiddos of their own now, and through a mix of nostalgia and old-fashioned practicality, a non-trivial number of them have found themselves behind the wheel of the very same types of cars their parents drove. Life’s funny, innit?

The Basics

Chrysler did nothing new for the 2026 Pacifica, strictly speaking. If you want to be technical about it, the company did add a 100th Anniversary commemorative “model” to the lineup, but it’s just a badge-and-sticker package for the Select trim and not relevant to the “Red Hot” Pinnacle Model that spent a week in my driveway.

The Pinnacle model has a $60,000 sticker price, and unlike some other seven-seaters, its interior earns it. The Pacifica both looks and feels genuinely nice inside—maybe even too nice for the sort of car you’re going to use to haul around greasy-fingered trash gremlins. But don’t worry, those fancy lumbar throw pillows are only $95 for the set. Buy a few extra sets at the dealer and stick ’em in a vacuum bag for when they inevitably need replacing—oh, and you can use the built-in vacuum cleaner to package them up.

All of that said, the Pacifica’s starting to get a bit long in the tooth. Its last redesign was nearly a decade ago, and the dashboard design bears that out. It’s time to ditch the big wing vents and tighten things up a bit in there.

Driving the 2026 Chrysler Pacifica Pinnacle

For the past 25 years, we’ve been praising the handling and ride quality of car-based crossovers, but (perhaps fittingly, given the subject matter) minivans were doing that sort of thing before it was cool. That was what made them so brilliant to begin with, after all—the packaging benefits of a front-wheel drive car were blended with the packaging benefits of an old-fashioned station wagon, which itself had more in common with today’s body-on-frame SUVs than it does with anything sold as a wagon. It’s certainly not sporty, but the Pacifica gets around corners just fine.

Like any proper high trim minivan, the Pacifica has an old-school V6. That’s not a knock against hybrids (though the Pacifica PHEV does have its compromises) so much as a commentary on how enduring the formula really is. There’s a reason early Chrysler minivans experimented with both turbocharged four-cylinders and transverse V6s: A tiny engine compartment combined with a seven-passenger payload means you need to get a lot of torque out of a relatively small engine. The 3.6-liter Pentastar’s 287 horses scoot it around just fine (even with a more-modest 262 pound-feet of torque on tap). If you want more grunt, you need the electric boost afforded by the PHEV.

But let’s be honest: the minivan is at its best at the end of a trip, when you need to park it. Whether it’s in a garage or a tight lot, sliding doors trivialize even the smallest of parking spaces. This is the superior door design, full stop. Everything we’ve done since has been either a regression or a pointlessly over-complicated iteration (even a minivan driver wouldn’t be caught dead with Falcon doors). If we’re going to live in a surveillance state, let’s have some drones follow SUV owners around so we can bill them every time their kids ding another swinging those huge-ass doors—the proceeds could fund an American autobahn system twice over.

Quick Verdict

Even as a bit of a self-described minivangelist, I’ve still occasionally been surprised by their reliable sales. Sure, plenty of them go to fleets (and judging by the lines to get into Disney and Universal parks in Florida last winter, rental fleets in particular), but that’s because they’re good at what they do. They don’t just fit in your driveway better than a seven-passenger SUV, after all; they’re similarly advantageous for rental companies that need to find space to store thousands of units at any given time.

But any doubts I have are always erased when I drive one, because that’s when I’m reminded why they were so successful in the first place. Like crossovers, they began life as an alternative to something larger and less practical, and they’ve since been spun off into a niche of their own. Chrysler practically invented this one, and it shows. Unfortunately, its age is starting to show too.

Chrysler provided The Drive with a seven-day loan of this vehicle for the purpose of writing this review.

2026 Chrysler Pacifica Pinnacle AWD Specs

Quick Take

It’s called the Pinnacle for a reason, but this tried-and-true minivan is starting to show its age