to not understand why you can't buy a 5 seater car that seats 5 people?

[haveuheard]

We have been trying and failing to buy a bigger car for about 6 months.

We want a car that will seat 5 people, with the possibility of having three car seats. Not massive seats, just HBBs. Nothing fits. Yes we could buy a minibus or a 7 seater and shove one of the kids in the boot inches from the back window but I don't want to, or we could spend more than a lot of people have for a house deposit but that seems stupid for a family car.

Why doesn't anyone make a sensible family car??

I don't know what you are looking at.

Our car is relatively small - Peugeot 308 - but it's a 5-seater.
They have a lap belt in the middle back, but it's fine. I can't recommended it too much as it happens.

My son's and wife's cars are mini sized, and they are both 5-seaters officially, although cramped for a long journey.

What car are you looking at?

What about two seats in the back, adult in the middle, and a child in the front?

We had a citroen xsara picasso and the back seat fit 3 car seats comfortably they are independent seats rather than a bench seat, really big boot space too. Just recently changed to a Hyundai i800 as we wanted an 8 seater for going out with grandparents at weekends

Thanks for all the suggestions.

We are going to view a few tomorrow and hopefully buy something. If not we might have to replace one of the car seats as I realise just hoping my car will get slightly wider is not going to work and comparing dimensions of all sorts of cars online isn't helping.

I had 3 booster seats in my Mazda 5 occasionally

I used to have 3 in my Mazda 6

Seems I am completely unreasonable, tried a Citroen C4 at the weekend and my 5 year olds car seat wouldn't even buckle up properly - they fit three seats in by making the outer ones smaller. And thats one of the wider ones with 3 lots of isofix.

So I think we have just given up on the idea. My eldest is out of a car seat in about 2 years so will look again then.

I have a Dacia Duster and it's quite big. I'm not sure if it would fit three HBBs in as mine are all huge now, but might be worth looking at?

Fiat Multiplas are excellent (as long as you don't get one with leaking sunroofs like we did!) but seem to be hard to come by now.

Zafiras are the shittest cars ever and you couldn't pay me to have another one! Everyone I know who has had one has had nothing but trouble with them.

You seem determined not to find a car that fits 3 car seats despite lots of good suggestions above. Did you really only try one car and then give up?

The Ford S-Max (for example) is significantly wider than the C4.

We had a zafira and no trouble at all however it was not possible to get 3 HBB in the rear seats (not using the 3rd row). We could just about get a small booster seat wedged in between the HBBs for a friend and that was a tight fit.

No way would we have done the wedge in permanently, it was an occasional one off

when I had 3 in car seats we had 2 x Ford Smax and I can confirm you can fit 3 car seats in - or 3 adults comfortable.

Apparently you can in Volvo C90s as well but I havent tried one yet - I am looking for something that will fit 3 teenagers in the back.

We have the 5 seater Citroen Picasso and it fits 3 car seats in the back of no problem. Middle seat isn’t iso fix but that doesn’t matter as long as you fit the seat correctly.

Fiat Multipla? Not my choice of car but 2x rows of 3 might be your solution. I’ve had a Renault grand scenic and the middle seat in the back is smaller than the seats by the doors. Also had a Citroen Picasso which did have 3x full size seats in the back.

I had a second hand ford galaxy for years. It was great, easy to manouevre and park. Really versatile. As the dc get older you find you are sharing scout/ swimming/ club runs with other parents and it really comes into its own then.