DETROIT — Soccer moms and dads, take note: Rumors of the minivan's death have been greatly exaggerated.

Even as Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Corp. plan to ditch their minivans in favor of newly popular crossover vehicles, Chrysler Group, which invented the minivan in 1984, is preparing to unveil its next models, and it's counting on high-volume sales.

The automaker will offer a peek at its 2008 Chrysler Town & Country and Dodge Caravan at the 2007 North American International Auto Show in just a few weeks.

Even if you're not a fan of the van, Chrysler, and analysts and suppliers who've seen it or been told about it, say you should plan to be impressed.

"Chrysler's new minivan is, from what I can tell, a dramatic departure from where they've been," said auto analyst Erich Merkle of IRN Inc. in Grand Rapids, Mich. "It's a more hard-edge, upright, industrial design than the current jellybean look.

"Chrysler is taking some risk here. They're taking their No. 1-selling product, and they're laying it on the line. That shows some machismo, when you can take your No. 1 product and turn it upside down. I think it will hit a home run."

The automaker needs to knock it out of the park with the new minivan because the seven-seat people-and-stuff mover is to Chrysler what the F-series pickup is to Ford.

It's the company's biggest seller and is responsible for nearly 20 percent of its annual sales.

Ford and GM are moving toward offering a variety of crossovers, vehicles that are classified as trucks but built on a car chassis.

Ford spokesman Jim Cain said the Dearborn-based automaker expects the minivan market to shrink and is investing in crossovers because Ford thinks that market, in which it already has the five-passenger Edge and the seven-passenger Freestyle, could grow to be as large as the passenger car segment or the pickup segment by 2010.

But Chrysler expects the minivan segment to hold steady or grow and hopes to grab an even larger share of the segment it already dominates.

Other automakers considered strong competitors in the segment, Toyota and Honda, say they are committed to minivans and have the ability to add to manufacturing capacity if there is demand for more.

Some view a dependence on minivans as risky at a time when many analysts, including Lindland, forecast a slight decline in the minivan segment and the other automakers have called it a dying design.

But Chrysler chief executive Tom LaSorda calls the new minivan a knockout: "We don't give up on the segment."

Suppliers who worked on the van said the new minivan will offer all the amenities you can find on any competitor plus some.

Examples of some of the mom-and-kid pleasers: more directed lighting, more pockets in the doors and built-in adjustable sunshades for the rear windows.

Chrysler launched the minivan during former chairman Lee Iacocca's reign in the early '80s and now sells more than twice as many minivans as any other automaker.

Ann Fandozzi, Chrysler director of product marketing, said Chrysler's research found the minivan segment holding steady at about 1.2 million units or growing slightly in 2007 as Generation Y starts its own families.

"It's a large segment of the population, and they're much more about family formation than, let's say, my generation, Generation X. This generation is much more like the baby boomers. They're going to have multiple kids. They put their family first. And as soon as you start talking families, right away minivan stability is a foregone conclusion."