Bucket and Sponge
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Let's talk about how the Windstar looks. The rear end is handsome enough and the new front end is OK (warning: the low bodywork under the bumper is easy to scrape on parking barriers). The side panels buck the current style trend of smooth, unadorned minivan bodies. The Windstar features several lines and contours that contribute to a raked appearance.

The Mustang Conspiracy Theory
Everyone loves a good conspiracy theory, right? Well here's one for you; one night when the Windstar design team had knocked off, the Mustang designers slipped in and played around with the Windstar. They had finished the new Mustang and were pretty pleased with themselves. They took one look at the proto Windstar and thought it would be a good idea to make sure that it didn't look sort of square and horizontal, like say an Aerostar or the original Dodge Caravan. So they added a gentle flair over the rear wheels and carved all the body lines up from front to rear, including the windows!"There", they thought,"now it looks right".

When the Windstar crew returned to work they didn't know what had happened. The new lines reminded them of something, but they couldn't think of what, and since they couldn't agree which feature they liked best, they kept them all!

No Driver-side sliding door
Much ado about nothing, we say. Who cares? It could be viewed as a safety feature, forcing back seat passengers out on the curb side (in North America, anyway). As a compromise, the driver's door is wider than the front passenger door (opposite design to the AMC Pacer!), but without the "Tip 'n Slide" seat (N/A on the 3.0L), a tall driver probably won't find the wider door an advantage.

As mentioned on our Safety page, the Windstar's standard rear wiper has a feature where it automatically makes one pass when you put the transmission in reverse and you have the front wipers on. This feature can be disabled, which is a good thing if you ever want to mount a strap-on bicycle rack to your Windstar.