To ask for your family car recommendations please?

[flowergirl24]

Family of 5. Need a new car as our short range EV is just not practical for us.
Needs:
Decent boot space (currently a Nissan Leaf so anything similar sized or bigger would be great)
Would like a high driving position
Decent safety features
Ideally get 3 across the back, but eldest coming up to not needing a full HBB

Does anyone have recommendations? My head is just swimming on auto trader and I can’t make any decisions.
Budget is 15K cash - would rather buy outright than do PCP.

Have had a normal car for a while so I would like something a bit nicer and bigger.

The Peugeot 5008 is one of few cars with the 3 seats unless you select a full in family car. Decent boot.

Would it be silly to spend 15K on a Land Rover Discovery? At that price, I’d be looking at one around 2015 with 100,000 miles on it.

I've heard Land Rovers are pretty unreliable so I'd not be buying one with a high mileage! This might not be up your street if you're looking at the Discovery, but maybe look at Skoda. They are part of the same group as VW and they rate highly in terms of safety and reliability. We have a Kamiq but the Karoq is the bigger version, and the Kodiaq is even bigger.

Landrovers have terrible reliability ratings. We just bought a family car and I really like them but they break down a lot.

I liked the Ford kugas but our local Ford garage is awful so we gave up and went next door to vw. We’ve ended up with a high spec Tiguan and I absolutely love it. We tested the boot with a dog crate and 2 paddle boards.

They aren’t very spacious tbh. If you use the back seats there is no boot. I’d go for a Kuga or similar. Mine is ace.

I love our Dacia Duster. Not very swanky but does everything we need it to and its really roomy.

Yes. The insurance would cost more than the car is worth and the car would be nicked in a week.

TBH at 100K miles I’m surprised it’s not been condemned to the scrapheap…likely got more problems under its bonnet than you could count.

I love my Volvo CX40. Safe, comfortable and not annoyingly long or wide, decent on petrol. Second hand are great as the drivers who like them don't tend to be wankers.

We've found the Citroen Grand Picasso a great family car. Very flexible interior & high driving position. The 2020 car is around £15,000. We put all weather tyres on ours.

We’ve had Ford S-max’s. Great cars! Reliable, 3 seats in the back, loads of space and pretty economical to run. Sounds like it’d be suitable?

Another vote for the Skoda Karoq. Room for three in the back, spacious boot and you can remove the back seats, as well as fold them down, if needed.

Another vote for the Citroen C4 Grand Picasso - we are a family of 5 too (all still in car seats) and it's perfect

We've got a Citroen C4 Picasso as well. Love the boot space and the big windows.
Wouldn't put all season tyres on it, though. However, depends on where you live. If you are in a town/city, they should be fine. We need proper winter tyres in winter and I've just gotten a new set of summer ones for this year.

Do not do that. You will regret it. Prices are nose diving due to insurance and reliability issues

@chocopuffs thank you for the advice. I think we’ll try a Skoda.

RAV4 self-charging Hybrid (or plug/hyrbid in but those are more expensive). Although I don't know if you would get one for 15k.

We have a C5 aircross - looks like an SUV, 3 full seats across the back.
It's only 1.2 so not too expensive to run. I really like it - i am a shortarse but it feels easy to drive despite being so large

I bought a 2015 range rover sport as a family car, it's fantastic.
If you're worried about engine look for one that has had a thorough service history and be prepared to have the oil changed every 6-9 thousand miles as from what I've read the crankshaft issues are due to fatigue that can be reduced by regular oil changes

How about a Kia Sorento?

Or a Qashqai if you already have a Nissan and like them? Not sure the back is enough though 🤔

2014 Freelander bought from new. Best car I've ever had. Don't ever want to change it.

Not sure what you can get one for now. My mileage is 80,000

We have the same, nothing fancy and i joke it does everything but nothing very well. Happy to run it into the ground while the kids are young though, i recently scratched it and thought nothing more than oh well

Hyundai Tucson or Kia Sportage (same car)? We've had both and liked them, had reliability troubles with the Tucson but from my extensive (😭) reading we were very unlucky. Not as fancy as some of those listed but cheaper so you'd get a newer model with more bells and whistles IME.

Can't help with three seats across the back though as ours are still in bulky younger seats than the HBBs.

I was going to suggest this, and yes there 70+ on Auto trader for less than £15k.

I was driving my dads land river 16 plate last year and it lost power slowly, I pulled over, but the engine start stop button would not turn off, the engine then started screaming and thick black smoke started coming out so much so some called the fire brigade, luckily my dads quick thinking he got in the drivers seat (he wasn't allowed to drive as he had had a major op) put it in gear and stalled it. It got towed to a garage who couldn't repair it. A £16k car totally useless, and couldn't claim on insurance. In hindsight he should have let it catch fire, at least he could have claimed on insurance!
Then a month later it happened to a friends car, exactly the same, a 66 plate same vehicle.
I have a Volvo xc60 65 plate that's still going strong in 107000, not sure it's big enough for your requirements, but look at the xc90 that's the bigger one 😊

Volvo XC40.
Fantastic car.