Why does everyone need a massive car these days?

what’s wrong with a button or dial

It's cost. A central touchscreen saves a fortune on the relatively complicated knobs and buttons which used to be an opportunity for designers to make unique interiors, I drive a 2018 Q7 occasionally and the switchgear is beautiful, all scrapped a year later for fiddlescreens.

Every car in 2025 looks the same inside. And outside for that matter.

Edit: Not every car, obviously. But the trend is definitely there.

We don't have a free market economy. It's a mixed market one with significant amounts of government intervention.

If the government wanted to restrict car size, they absolutely could.

I don’t need one, I wanted one. I don’t care if you don’t like my choices. I park superbly btw

The average household size in the UK is 2.36. The number of families needing to cart around 3 or more children is tiny (even if they are all on Mumsnet 😂)

I love these threads because all the people who it clearly isn't aimed at come out in outrage to talk about how they need to fit their children's giant bulky hobbies in and their elderly parents' wheelchair and they live on a farm and have to carry sheepdogs etc etc, just absolutely falling over themselves about it. If you've got an obvious enough reason then this thread probably isn't about you, is it? Relax a bit.

My friend - who has no children with oversized hobbies or any reason to transport anything bigger than her handbag - has a Range Rover because she likes being high up and it feels fancy. No other real reason. I have a Sportage because I like being high up and I can't afford an Audi Q7. I can park mine, though!

I think it's also the weight of the electric batteries damaging the road.

Same experience. We had an old Renault Megane estate for years - pretty much everything fitted in the boot, great for camping or carting old furniture to the dump, could even have slept in it if we'd had to. Nothing now comes close apart from the Skoda Octavia estate. Everything else, no matter how massive, has less boot space.

Also, these huge cars these days have huge tyres which are causing all the terrible potholes we have now.

You quoted me so fair to assume it was in response to me either way.

No one is envious of other people’s debt (well, that’s not true I guess I’m envious of those on 10 year fixes at 1%) but neither is any normal person envious of people’s cars, and neither are people who buy cars on leases trying to “keep up with the jones’”

Because we regularly travel with 5 children.

Where would you like me to put the 5th, in the boot along with the 3x musical instruments, 5 x school bags, 5 coats and 3x hockey sticks / cricket bats / cardboard models / cake sale contributions / my work stuff? Have you tried to get 5 children, in car / booster seats, into a small car along with all their stuff?

We also live down a muddy pothole ridden track, and our old smaller car was crashed into, so we had to replace it.

We also have a smaller car that we drive when it’s possible. It’s actually more polluting that the bigger one, are you judging only on size?

The credit card debt was in response to a poster being told people were bitter.

I think it is you who doesn’t understand leasing after you compared it to taking out a mortgage.

Anyway other people’s loans and debt are definitely not enviable to anyone.

BTW I fully understand debt (and that is exactly what a leased car is). For many years my job entailed trying to come up with feasible repayment plans to avoid/delay repossession for people who borrowed before their circumstances changed.

I still don’t think you understand what a lease is.

the car is being bought anyway. “Massive credit card debt” indicates someone who is buying things they can’t afford, people who don’t have the money.

You have to be able to afford the monthly lease payment- in full- every month. You don’t get to make a minimal payment and think about making the rest up later.

3 years later you buy the car, or you trade it in for a new one, usually because you like cars and getting new ones.

you could compare it to someone who puts all their purchase on Amex for the cash back and pays it off in full every month. That’s not massive credit card debt either.

Bitter for not buying a car on credit? Are you quite mad?

I must be very odd because funnily enough I’m not envious of other people’s massive credit card debt either.

We have an eight seater because there are six people in our family and sometimes we all go on holiday or visits or out somewhere together.

I understand @luckylavender . But a VW Up is about the same size as my 1989 VW Polo, while the Polo is now the size of a 1980s Golf.
So as well as the estate, we drive a mini, which is huge compared to the one I drove while learning to drive.

I always find they breathe down my neck when I’m doing the speed limit or close to the speed limit - the road I use most is a country road with a few straights but a lot of tight corners where you do have to slow down, and hills, and not many passing places. There’s one long straight where I do go 60, and if things are coming the other way, there’s usually one right up my backside, sidling in and out to see about passing, then the second it gets a chance it’s off, and out of sight. That happens often. Also on our town bypass there’s a section where it has 2 lanes on one side and one on the other, and the speed limit is still 60 along the but as soon as it goes to the 2 lanes, one of those massive vehicles always barges past me going well over 60. They don’t seem to have working indicators either.

Car parking space sizes and those who take a while to park are not down to car sizes.

If car sizes dictated space sizes, there would be no issue.

The issue fundamentally is about driver incompetence at being able to drive and park, irrespective of vehicle size.

We live in a free market economy - people buy SUVs do so because they can/want to.

Hating on them is not a good look when the issue is drivers who cant drive, even in small cars.

Frankly we need more SUVs, if only to drive the eco whack jobs insane and provide free entertainment!

@pinkyredrose - my 12 year old is 5'11" 🤣

I have a Fiat 500 as the roads around where I live are about 8 feet wide with cars parked down one side. A Range Rover would get stuck so you never see them. Thank god as I hate the damn things.

There's one hell of a difference between a range rover and a fiat 500. Dozens of other cars sized between your extremes.

I agree. We've often had an estate car and I was really surprised recently when we tried to buy a new one. Basically nothing other than a Skoda was a "traditional" style estate car. It's all about bulky wide cars but even those mostly have tiny boot spaces when you take into account the wheel arches which often reduce the width. You have to go to biggest in range to get the same kind of boot space that you used to get in the estate version of an average sized car. We used to have a Ford Escort Estate (1977 I think) and it was enormous at the back with the back seats down - a huge wide open space.

then obviously, please don’t assume those who do drive big expensive cars can’t afford them either (as was the point of my posts)

Last time I checked we were supposedly living in a free country. I choose to have a large car and I know how to drive and park it exceptionally well so what's the issue? Are we all supposed to be in fiat 500s for you?

The other problem is that even if thr drivers of big cars can park properly, they're still taking up a lot of space in the bay. So when I park my little car and another one parks the other side, I'm still struggling to open my door and get in or out. Luckily I'm slim, so I can kind of slide in. But it's bloody annoying when I'm parked right in the middle of the bay and should have ample room.

Please don’t assume that because people don’t drive massive, fuck-off cars, it means they can’t afford them!

I have just swapped a mini for a new Defender. I love the mini but the roads around me have been flooded for the best part of six months and won’t be fixed any time soon.