Car help…car seats!

[Georgethecat1]

This is what I’m looking for and why is it so hard?!

1. ideally three full seats in the back row for three car seats
2. or the options of a good 7 seater (less idea not a fan of having a kid in the boot space)
3. ideally more SUV style but happy with a ford SMax too (only one I’ve found so far)
4. prefer it not be massive (more Xc60 compared to xc90)
5. below 40k brand new (I’m not paying £500 road tax a year)
6. ideally 20-30k for a few years old

i feel like im after a unicorn car at this rate, found the ford S-Max but that’s about it!

Shameless bump

Same here, there's nothing out there but the Ford S Max that we can find either and we've been searching for ages

Only people carriers will have 3 full rear seats wont they? Family wagons like what Citroen make

£29k gets you a new shape X Trail 7 Seater
https://www.westway.co.uk/nearly-new-car/nissan-coventry/nissan-x-trail-1-5-mhev-163-acenta-premium-5dr-7-seat-xtronic-brilliant-silver/bg73jwy

Or an older shape 7 seater is around £20k for a not too old one.

Audi Q7 has three seats with isofix in middle row, and two seats in the boot.

What ages are they? Over 3 they are able to go in the middle seat without a car seat if they are between two car seats. Not ideal but that's what we did.

All still need a car seat but one is close at 130cm
however from a safety perspective would like
to keep them in a high back booster till closer to 150cm if possible.

Waiting till they are 135cm might be our best option

I totally would get and Audi q7 or Volvo xc90 but they are massive and I begrudge the £500
road tax. Might be our only options!

I loved our petrol smax

Save a shedload of money then and get a Citroen C5 aircross with 3 full sized rear seats

We have three extended rear facing car seats in the back of our VW Touran. It’s a 7 seater so has a big boot with the seats down. It’s not massive, very much a medium size. We also have the sporty version so a little more lux. We paid round £23k for a 2020 plate with minimal miles. It’s great, very pleased with it!!

Ohhhh this sound like it could be a winner ticking most boxes!!

But a Touran is even uglier than an S-Max. I thought you wanted an SUV shape.

@Jutemat yeah I got over excited and thought it was the Tiguan 😅🤣🤣

Vw Toureg? it has 7 seats and looks more like suv

If you pick narrow cars seats (maxi cosi often narrowest), you can fit three across most cars much easier.
For high back boosters recently I found the ‘maxicosi rodifix pro2’ to be one of the narrowest

I think the vw Tiguan or vw id4 would also work.

here’s a reviews of three car seats in a Tiguan.
babydrive.com.au/reviews/suvs/2022-volkswagen-tiguan-comfortline/

I think the Touran is better looking than the S-Max, especially the R-Lines. With three car seats though you have to be practical as well. There’s very few cars that can comfortably fit them safely. The Peugeot 5008 might suit you as it’s technically an SUV with the seats needed. Check out the car seat groups on Facebook. There’s a list of easy 3 across cars but most are MPVs. Good luck!

We had pretty much the same wish list and ended up with a 2019 plate Peugeot 5008 a few months ago. It's been absolutely bloody brilliant so far.

We had a Nissan Xtrail before and I sulked like hell at having to sell it because I loved that car, but the 5008 ticked all the boxes, plenty of space for 2 x HBB and 1 x ERF across the middle row, loads of boot space, plenty of front passenger leg room even with the ERF behind it. Plus two proper extra seats with tethers in the boot.

It's an SUV so has that big extra height and I really didn't want a people carrier as felt if I was about to spend £18k buying a new (to me) car then I needed to be something that wasn't hideous and had a good spec, so we chose one with all the bells and whistles (might be called a GT line spec, but would need to double check)

The 5008 has three full seats across the middle row, all with isofix. There are v few cars that offer this as we spent bloody hours researching cars. So many you can't actually put three car seats in a row, we had to sell our 2017 Xtrail because you couldn't put a car seat in the middle 2nd row, nor in the boot seats, so despite being sold as a 7 seater you could only put car seats in 2 of the seats.

"Car seat safety Uk" is a brilliant Facebook group who are really hot on car seat safety and configurations of seats/cars, Thats where the recommendations for my 5008 came from. Well worth a look on there.

We have a Citroen c5 aircross. It has 3 full size seats in the back and is SUV style. We currently have 2 rear-facing in the outside seats and a high back booster in the middle with no problem.

You have to be joking me. They should be in an extended rear facing proper car seat at that stage, my word, that beggars belief.

Yeah, pick the x-trail

@Jutemat the problem with the xtrail is you can't put a child restraint in either of the boot seats or the middle second row. So it's no good if you have three children in car seats, not unless you're prepared to have a rear facing car seat in the front passenger seat (provided you can turn the air bag off) and that adult gets relegated to the back. That's where we got caught out with our xtrail.

OP you really have to check the car handbook of the specific make, model and year of the car you want to buy because they vary so much, even between years.