Quick—what’s the only AWD, supercharged, mid-engine car ever mass produced? If you guessed some Lamborghini or Audi, you’re wrong. The answer is actually the mild-mannered Toyota Previa. Yup, the rad 1990s vintage bubble-shaped supercar of minivans.

There has never been a supercharged, mid-engine, AWD supercar?

With so many special edition supercars from boutique manufacturers, it’s wild that no factory-built car sold in North America has had all three of these attributes. But the truth is that mid-engine AWD supercars are usually more about handling than Hellcat power. And while Lamborghinis and Ferraris increasingly offer turbocharged engines, superchargers are much more niche.

Yes, many Audis have an AWD “Quattro” system. But the mid-engine R8 was never supercharged. And yes, you could get a supercharged, mid-engine Ford GT. But never with AWD. Besides a couple of unique one-offs, the configuration is almost unheard of. Enter the Toyota Previa.

The Toyota Previa is one bizarre minivan

There’s an exception to almost every rule. And for a bizarre number of rules, that exception is the Toyota Previa. Toyota made the Previa in some form from 1990 through 2019. From 1991 through 1997, it offered the crazy little vehicle in the U.S.

The base model was weird enough. It had a mid-mounted I4 engine in a little “doghouse”-style box between the driver and passenger seats. That connected to the rear wheels, through an available manual transmission. That’s right—you could buy a stick shift minivan from Toyota. In the 1990s. What the actual hot hatch?

The manual transmission might have been Toyota’s attempt to make up for the anemic power plant, rated at 138 horsepower. Load all three rows with adults, and that gets to be a pretty sluggish highway car. So Toyota decided to do something even wilder to the Previa. It supercharged the little minivan.

The Toyota Previa with a supercharger made 161 horsepower. It was only offered with an automatic transmission. But you could option it with AWD.

Toyota named the minivan “Previa” because it hoped the vehicle would be a “preview” of future automotive technology. Unfortunately, this unique vehicle was a dead-end in automotive evolution. But used Previas are still very cheap: KBB reports that even the desirable 1997 model year’s value starts at $2,549.

You can see Doug DeMuro’s rundown of all the quirks of the world’s quirkiest minivan in the video embedded below: