Minivans, to both Baby Boomers and Millennials, are as cool as a Tilley hat or Birkenstock sandals worn with woolly socks. They are the automotive equivalent of a Walkman cassette player. A minivan is a car for the Brady Bunch, not a slick, badass tech tool for bae (before anyone else) urbanites.

To the typical Baby Boomer, the minivan is nothing more than a pint-sized delivery truck with room for up to seven kids and their stuff, all at a price that can start as low as $20,000 brand new. To Boomers, the minivan is a “need it” vehicle, not a “want it” ride.

Honda Canada is not offering big factory sales sweeteners now, says Unhaggle.com, but you can still get nearly $2,000 is negotiated discounts from a willing dealer.

Honda Odyssey Touring Elite.

2014 Honda Odyssey Touring Elite.

To Millennials, the kids of Baby Boomers, minivans are simply an unwelcome reminder of the comfortable, roomy, suburban childhood they left behind to move into a 400 square-foot downtown apartment.

Boomers would rather settle for a 10-year-old Jeep Cherokee than a new Dodge Grand Caravan. Millennials would rather ride the bus. And yet tens of thousands of Canadians leave dealer lots driving a minivan, year after year. Despite a dowdy, battered image, minivans remain immensely popular.

The Dodge Grand Caravan is available with nearly $10,000 in combined factory and dealer incentives, according to Unhaggle.com.

2016 Dodge Grand Caravan SXT Blacktop Package

Dodge Grand Caravan SXT Plus

2016 Dodge Grand Caravan

Through the first 11 months of this year, FCA Canada, the Former Chrysler Canada, had sold nearly 42,000 minivans. DesRosiers Automotive Consultants reports that Canadians bought more than 80,000 small vans through the end of November.

Honda continues to sell about 1,000 Odyssey minivans a year. Kia will finish 2015 having sold more than 3,000 freshly re-made Sedona minivans.

The Mazda5 is on the way out of Mazda’s product line, but even now, this dated little family hauler finds a couple of hundred happy or at least resigned customers each month. And Toyota sells more than 1,000 Siennas every month – and hopes to do even better in 2016. Toyota Canada is throwing in even more “stuff” designed to sweeten the deal on a vehicle that, as Toyota argues, “does everything a family needs it to do.” The minivan calling card is comfort, convenience and space.

Toyota Sienna

That’s a formula that resonated in the early 1980s when Chrysler brought the first “Magic Wagons” to market. The television pitchman was a Canadian magician, the Winnipeg-born Doug Henning, whose television specials drew massive audiences of more than 50 million in the United States. (Adele, the red-hot pop singer, pulled in 11.3 million viewers for her recent Live in New York special.)

Peak sales for minivans in North American hit 1.4 million in 2000 and have been on the decline ever since. One after the other, automakers have dropped out of the minivan race.

Nissan recently tossed the Quest from its Canadian lineup, despite a valiant effort to sex-up the design. Mazda, we know, is moving to expand its SUV array, at the expense of the MX-5. Ford long ago dumped the Windstar/Freestar, Aerostar and Mercury Monterey.

Mazda5

Mazda5

True, Ford tiptoed back into minivan-land with a passenger version of its Transit Connect commercial wagon, and FCA sells something called the ProMaster City with two rows of seats and plenty of cargo space. But neither of these represents an all-in commitment to the minivan buyer.

FCA, however, sees a bright future for the minivan. The company is retooling a minivan plant in Windsor, Ont., specifically for the next generation Chrysler Town & Country – and what we’re led to believe will be some other less fancy, less expensive, more budget-friendly family wagon to replace the outgoing Dodge Grand Caravan.

Earlier this year at the New York auto show, a senior FCA official told Automotive News, “I think there is a selection of vehicles we have in the works that could potentially manage that (sub-$25,000) customer and give them something they want.”

A senior FCA Canada official told me that the affordable minivan market in Canada simply is too large to ignore. FCA Canada will have something for the so-called price-sensitive minivan customer.

It makes sense. As the FCA official said in New York, “…it really comes down to ‘I like the size, but I want the affordability, and if I can’t afford what you’re offering, I’m going to go elsewhere.’ So we’ve got to figure that out.” FCA has a next-generation minivan plan and we are likely to see the details next January at the Detroit auto show.

Various “spy” reports suggest the coming Chrysler Town & Country will be wider and taller than the current model. The cabin will use many design ideas and components seen in other FCA models today — rotary shifter, Uconnect infotainment interface with an 8.4-inch touch screen. And Automotive News reports that FCA has told investors that the next-generation Town & Country will come with an optional plug-in hybrid powertrain.

All very nice. But what if you are a well adjusted family buyer today, one who needs functionality not sexy styling? What if you’re on a tight budget, too?

Look for the deals out there right now. Unhaggle.com’s Andrew Tai says some manufacturer’s have released holiday or boxing week bonus rebates – including $1,000 extra on the 2016 Dodge Grand Caravan and the 2016 Chrysler Town & Country (applied after tax), as well as a $500 Boxing Week bonus (applied after tax). The total discount on a Town & Country today can exceed $12,000 – and nearly $10,000 on a Grand Caravan.

Beyond FCA, Mazda has $3,500 or more in play on a Mazda5 and Kia has $2,000 on a Sedona. The factory deals or “spiffs” on the Odyssey and Sienna amount to $0, though dealer discounts ranging to nearly $2,000 are possible.

So the big money in play is at FCA, both now at dealerships and in the future in terms of the investment FCA has put into reinventing its minivan lineup. Who knows, perhaps retiring Boomers will fall back in love with their little people haulers, and as Millennials start having kids, they too might see the value in the currently oft-maligned minivan. What once was cool may yet be cool again once Millennials move from their micro apartments to something larger and more family-friendly — and they start grappling with the budget-busting cost of raising kids.

For advice, Millennials can just ask their parents.