Criticised for its lack of a stow-away third-row seat in its current minivan line, Chrysler plans to leapfrog the competition with two rows of rear seats that fold into cargo wells under the floor, creating a flat surface from driver’s seat to tailgate, WardsAuto.com reported.

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The new minivans will be designated ’04 models and assembled at the Windsor, Ontario, Canada, plant, the report said.

According to WardsAuto.com, the floor pan has been revised to include two large holes where the seats go, with additional pieces underneath to create tub-like storage wells. The second row seats are bucket, as opposed to bench or captain’s chairs in current models.

WardsAuto.com said the innovative seating, as well as a paring of the minivan line-up for the ’04 model year, and introduction of a limited edition series this autumn, are all moves designed to preserve the supremacy of the Chrysler minivan models which have faced increasing competition from the likes of Honda’s Odyssey.

Chrysler’s market share has fallen from 36% in 2002 to 29.0% for the first eight months of 2003 and August sales accounted for 26.5% of the segment, according to Ward’s data.

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WardsAuto.com said critics have pointed to the lack of a fold-in-the-floor third-row seat as a serious weakness, noting that the feature debuted on the Honda Odyssey five years ago and has come to be considered the price of entry in the competitive segment that still accounts for about 1.3 million sales annually in North America – 1.1 million of them in the US.

As well as the Odyssey, four new minivans on the US market – the Toyota Sienna, Nissan Quest and Ford Freestar (Windstar replacement) and Mercury Monterey – all have engineered wells into which the third-row seat can slide for additional cargo space in back, WardsAuto.com noted.