Family car - yes, pushchairs are huge!

[essayer]

For baby #1 we managed fine with the Leon, the travel system went in easily with the lie flat chair.

Baby #2 has arrived and we've discovered that the double chair travel system and won't fit in the boot without plenty of faff, leaving no room for shopping.

Additionally, Dog needs to be relegated to the boot, sitting her between the kids in the middle is not going to work!

Mainly short journeys with the occasional long trip/holiday so would prefer petrol. Need satnav/phone - OH doesn't like big cars so something medium sized with parking sensors - any other tech a bonus

Ideally something which will fit a travel system and leave space for the dog (small lab sized), and once we ditch the pram and move to a double pushchair, something which will fit that in lengthways

Shortlist - looking £25-30k or equivalent lease

Seat Ateca - good boot, quite similar to Leon, annoyingly the SE Tech is only available in the 1.0 petrol or 1.6 diesel
VW Tiguan - SE Nav 1.4 TSI seems a good option, cheap leases (half tempted by the SEL for the awesome LCD dash!)
Q5/X3 - possibly worth buying at 1yo on HP and keeping for a few years?
Mazda 6 estate
Mazda CX-5
Skoda Superb - bit big?
Passat estate


Any other suggestions?

Edited by essayer on Tuesday 25th October 17:27

[essayer]

She was fine with a 3-series, so probably no bigger - although F+R sensors would be handy

Good shout on the XC60, will look at that too

[essayer]

The only thing that puts me off with the whole VAG range - we've had the Leon for 2 years, and it's great, but the Octavia, Ateca, Tiguan, Leon FR are all pretty identical inside! A change does have appeal.

Of course what we should have done was buy the Leon FR or Octavia two years ago

[essayer]

Ultimately the travel system (Oyster Max) works for our current arrangement (newborn in car seat or bassinet, 2yo in a seat). Our eldest is a bit too unpredictable to walk alongside a pushchair right now, and we like being able to move baby from the isofix base straight onto the travel system instead of taking him out of the car seat.

Both the car seats have isofix and floor supports, so this does knock out being able to use much of the rear passenger footwells for storage.

We do have a double pushchair, but I don't think we'll be using that for another six months or so. Even then, I can imagine it will fill much of a hatchback boot, and we still need to find room for the dog.


I understand why people buy Zafiras now.

[essayer]

Passat or Mazda 6 looking like the contenders so far, although still looking!

I've realised I need a retractable boot cover - most of the SUV style cars have a hatchback-style one piece cover, removing it whenever we take the dog anywhere would be a faff.

The CR-V has a retractable cover as standard, there's a kit for it on the CX-5 and X3, but not for the Ateca/Tiguan..

How exciting

[essayer]

Ahbefive said:

Travel system lol.

I have 2 kids and never had any issues using car seats and buggys in a Subaru legacy, Volvo S60 or Impreza. You don't need a bus and a travel system.

Happy to hear suggestions on transport for a toddler (walking, but liable to run away) and a newborn (has to lie flat..) smaller than an Oyster Max!


FWIW I found a great site for finding the boot sizes
http://www.rica.org.uk/content/car-search

Apparently the Octavia estate has a longer boot (seats up) than the Superb!

[essayer]

In the end ..



I went for the Tiguan ..

Not as much boot space as some of the estates, but plenty of room in the cabin and spacious in the rear - pram fits easily and so does the dog! Sensors all round so hopefully the missus will be fine driving it

Cheap on a lease, although I did step up to the SEL version as one was available from stock, and the active dashboard and LED lights were just too tempting.

Thanks all for the suggestions. Anyone want to buy a Seat Leon?

[essayer]

It's the 2wd so it's not even an off roader

[essayer]

So the bus loaded up today for a visit to the outlaws
Pleased that the pram plus bassinet plus seat fit in the boot alongside the dog proudly sat on her bed. With a bit of fiddling the load cover actually fits underneath the boot floor which is a nice idea. A retractable load cover would be even better but not an option so far (there is an aftermarket one for the Mk1 Tiguan so maybe one will follow for this one)

The rear seats move forward quite a bit and even with two car seats installed there's still plenty of gap between the kids and the front seats. So we would easily do an overnight or two - I think anything longer and we're into roof box territory.

Sneakily I turned up the air con in the back so that the kids slept the whole way

The car is awesome on the motorway, radar cruise and dynamic traffic sign recognition make navigating the numerous 50 limit roadworks so much easier. With DSG and blind spot cameras etc I bet it would be even better.

Noticed that the LED headlights have some clever masking system so you can leave them on full beam and they block off the areas to prevent blinding other drivers, quite mesmerising to watch.

Gratuitous dog and pram pic