The brilliance of the Element is the flat bottom interior and durable plastic finish. A minivan to me seems too lumpy inside. In my E, I would take the from wheel off my road bike and roll it in backwards. I’d have one rear seat flipped up leaving seating for three. With my mountain bike, I could just push the dropper post down and put the whole bike in there standing. It would be easy to roll two bikes in there.
No carpet to worry about after a muddy mountain bike ride. You can just sweep it out. (It’s a myth that you can clean out an Element with a garden hose. Sure you could do it but then you’d have water in every crevice rusting the car from the inside out.)
I also like having the bikes inside. You can stop at store or restaurant after a ride and not worry about theft so much. The bikes are also pretty well hidden in the back. I had an old large black bed sheet that I’d throw over my bikes and stuff. You could look through the windows from the outside and just see blackness.
I have been eyeing the 4Runner. They are much more common and easy to find. It seems that if you can get one that doesn’t have the 3rd row seat you’ll have a lot of top to bottom room for bikes.
These images of “bikes” inside Elements crack me up:
