Dodge Caravan Engine Inquiry

My brother recently screwed up my parents minivan very bad. He was driving very hard (flooring it most of the time) for about 45 mins a while back. The next morning he awoke to find it making a clicking noise while accelerating, later to find out that there was a piston problem with the engine. Three grand later, it was fixed and my van was back to normal. The mechanics where not exactly sure what happened, but I did recall them asking it "did the engine get hot?" Did the engine overheat causing engine damage? Was this a fluke?

FYI the engine is the 3.8L V6. I've heard that you cant drive minivan's hard, but why is that? Is that false? Does the type of engine make a difference? Why would riding a mustang engine hard be any less dangerous than doing so on a minivan?

Sorry for all the questions, but I would really like this cleared up. (No, I know virtually NOTHING about cars).

Thanks. :)

Engine reliability depends on two things:
1. Design of the engine
2. How well the owner takes care of it

The type of car (such as minivans) have nothing to do with whether or not you can 'drive hard' or not. The Chrysler 3.8 isn't the most reliable engine out there, and flooring it for 45 minutes would undoubtedly break something. The engine probably did overheat since the cooling system probably couldnt keep up for such high driving demand. Overheating can cause warping of vital engine parts, and it literally "cooks" the motor oil, so there you go.

As the above poster stated... Its the engine, Chrysler's engines aren't that well built. And also as the above poster also stated, flooring it for 45 mins is a really bad idea. I am not sure of many engines that can take a beating like that. 45 mins of straight full out force is just terrible. And by the way, Mustang engines aren't much better, so don't think that because you have a performance car that you can do that. Performance cars can take more of a beating, but not necessarily something like that.
Chris