best car for family camping

[oranges123]

For some years, we have just about managed to get our camping stuff in our Fiesta with a roof box and the back seats folded down. Now we have DD though, either the car goes or she stays at home. After much thought we have decided to ditch the car.

Could all you family camping experts (particularly the less minimalist amongst you) recommend the roomiest most camping-friendly cars you have had? We thought about a van but this is probably going to be our only vehicle so I would prefer a car ideally, possibly an estate or MPV-type.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts.

What do you all do without cupholders? Not drink in the car I suppose. (I really must get over this obsession I have with them).

Would these solve the cupholder problem?

No eating or drinking in the car oranges....well that's what I tell the ds's anyway

I am still trying to get sugar out of the passenger seat from scoffing sour fruit pastilles in the car a few weeks back

We have a zafira and given that I used to have a Nissan Micra I'm sure you will find the transition from a fiesta OK! The fact that its high up makes it easier to drive and manouvere than you expect.

I am NOT a minimal camper and we manage OK with 2 kids and all our crap. Plus it is great for when the kids have mates over to play

Brilliant - thanks Yellow Dinosaur. We have made the leap and take delivery of our Zafira (with parking sensors, thank goodness) this evening. I am due to pack it with all our camping gear tomorrow morning in time for the four hour drive to Devon tomorrow afternoon. Fingers crossed it all fits in!

Thanks again to everyone for your advice

Not read the whole thread, but think you need to consider (as we did) that most of the year you WON'T be camping, so don't need to power a big, heavy car for the rest of the time. We have a Vauxhall Meriva, which we use a roof box with. the rear seats move forwards so you can create more boot space, and also the rear seats fold flat (individually) so you can create even more room. We are a family of 4 (1 teenager, 1 child) and can easily manage our enormous tent, plus all our stuff. It has as much interior space (for rear seat/front seat passengers) as the Zafira, but is much smaller and therefore cheaper to run.

Oh god. I'm scared now, having read this thread. Have just made a list of everything we need (i.e. not everything I want) to take for our inaugural Aug Bank Hol Camp (a festival) and I can't imagine it all fitting in the car. We have a Mazda 6, and it's not even the estate like Slubber's, and she says she doesn't have enough room. AND she has a roofbox.

Thing is, we recently added to the family and although he's pretty cute, we are now down a back seat and up another person to pack for. (Though we do slings mostly, not buggy. But want to take the McLaren for DS1 to crash in at festival. Argh!)

Oh shit shit. What do I chuck out? Excess clothes? Food (festival food is ver pricy)? DS2? (first in, first out basis)

Well, Devon was a bit of a washout (and much too far to go for a long weekend - note to self, must draw a 2 hour line round our house for future weekends). On a brighter note though, it gave the Zafira a good long test drive which it passed with flying colours. I packed it and it took everything without, admittedly, any room to spare. No second children for us it turns out! However, with a roof box for long trips we would have had loads of room and for future weekend camps we are going to cut down significantly on the crap/glamping essentials (delete as applicable according to whether you are DH or Oranges).

Major major plus is that I am comfortable driving it which I was quite worried about (admittedly I have only done local driving so far).

And RWD, my experience is you never wear all the clothes you take (particularly to festivals) and children never need the 45 blankets you bring "just in case" (maybe that is just me). Also if you aim for bacon sarnies for breakfast and cook and freeze some stews or similar before you go you can cut down severely on cooking apparatus - just a couple of shallow bowls to eat everything on and sporks maybe and a saucepan and small cooker to heat it all in/cook the bacon. That's our plan for weekend camping from now on anyway. Oh and roofboxes are the way forward, definitely.

I have always used Volvos as they are bomb proof, my 1989 volvo 740 2.0 estate was sold to a window cleaner with 515 k miles on the clock and the engine had never been split once. my current work car, a 1992 940 petrol turbo estate has now got 280 k on it and has had no engine work at all bar a rebuilt turbo, timing belts and a clutch@220k miles. I have pulled 1.5 tonnes behind both of my volvos and it did not bother them in the least. My only other estate car was a VW passat which died completely with under 100k on the clock. I carry all my gear inside the volvo with 2 canoes on the roof and have never needed a trailer . Volvo for life, I would not buy any other brand.

I see you've gone for a Zafira - my previous car was one too (now a Citroen Picasso as we needed 3 full size seats in the back and the Zafira was a bit of a squeeze). I loved driving the Zafira, much nicer to drive than the Citroen.
We managed a camping weekend in the Zafira with me, DP, DD as a tiny baby and 4 teenagers - we did have a roof box though. I was amazed at how much stuff we got in it!