Start with what the Volkswagen Routan is: a 5-door minivan with 3.6 L Pentastar V6, built from 2008 to 2013, in the decade of stability control, dual-clutch gearboxes and the first serious hybrids. What it meant takes a little longer.
Where it came from
The Volkswagen Routan is a seven-seat minivan marketed and sold by Volkswagen from the 2009 to 2014 model years. It is a rebadged variant of the Chrysler RT platform, with revised styling, content features, and suspension tuning from the fifth-generation Dodge Grand Caravan and Chrysler Town & Country. Manufactured alongside the Chrysler and Dodge minivans at Windsor Assembly and marketed in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, the Routan debuted at the 2008 Chicago Auto Show and went on sale in the United States in September of the same year as a 2009 model.
The Routan's minivan variants include the Dodge Caravan, Ram C/V, Chrysler Town & Country, and Lancia Voyager (export); by 2009, they ranked as the 13th best-selling automotive nameplate worldwide, with over 12 million sold. Production of the Routan was halted in 2012 due to high inventory levels, and Volkswagen announced that the 2013 model year would be primarily reserved for rental car companies and other fleets, with limited availability to the public at dealer showrooms. This also held for the 2014 Routan.
Under the skin
The engine is 3.6 L Pentastar V6; other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. On the scales it comes to 2100 kg. Drive goes through a 62TE 6-speed automatic. The layout matters: the engine drives the front wheels, the packaging choice that gives a small car a big cabin. The wheelbase is 121.2 in. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
In context
In the Volkswagen line-up the Volkswagen Routan has a clear place: it replaced the Volkswagen Transporter (T4) (U.S. & Canada) / Volkswagen Sharan (Mexico); it handed the line to the Volkswagen Atlas (U.S. & Canada) / Volkswagen ID. Buzz / Volkswagen Transporter (T6) (Mexico); the factory was Windsor, Ontario (Windsor Assembly), Canada. The cars a buyer would have weighed it against include the Tesla Roadster, the Nissan 370Z, the Hyundai i30. Nearby in the Volkswagen catalogue sit the Volkswagen Apollo and the Kübelwagen.
Owning one today
Buying one now means $16,400–$30,300 for a typical example, and running it — fuel and maintenance at its age — costs about $4,752–$6,848 a year. Insurance sits around $1,240–$1,940 a year. The figures are class-level estimates from the federal record, with the formula on the methodology page; the model-year pages carry complaints, recalls and repair costs year by year.