Recommendations for cars with 3 full seats in back

[BeingATwatItsABingThing]

It’s looking likely that we’ll have to replace my Hyundai Tucson as it keeps having issues and is becoming a money pit. We’ll likely have about £6000 to spend on a replacement with the following criteria:

• three full seats in the back/middle row - we have three children with two in car seats (a high back booster and a 360 spinning chair). This is a must because we want the option of having all of the children in the same row without DD1 being squashed in the middle.
• a 7-seater is preferable
• large boot capacity
• if it is a 7-seater, the extra seats aren’t the crumple zone of the car

We’ve seen Kia Carens, Ford Galaxys, etc. online but if anyone has one they have loved, please give me your recommendations.

We live in a very rural county in the SW with lots of country roads but we’re in a large, built-up town. PIL live in London so we’re there a lot too.

My Tucson has been in the garage and has cost us £7000 since just before Christmas with a complete engine seizure which required full replacement and now the turbo has gone. It’s a 19 plate, we bought it in 2022 and it has less than 50,000 on the clock. As much as we know that older cars cost money, our high-spec newer one has too.

By comparison, DH’s Mazda 3 is a 12 plate, less than 80,000 on the clock and is essentially a tin can with wheels. It’s cost us nowhere near £7000 in the 11 years we’ve owned it. Unfortunately, it’s just not big enough for us.

That’s a ridiculous thing to say! We bought a 2010 Renault Megane in 2020 so it’s now 15 years old and we’ve hardly spent any money on it. I think one year we had £1200 in repairs and the other maybe £300-£400. If you get a used car that’s already had timing belts, water pump etc changed they needn’t cost thousands to run every year especially if well maintained. Diesel engines have a long life span! I’d be fuming if I had to spend £7k on car repairs. I mean I don’t think we could afford to spend that much. Would rather get a new (to us) car:

@calishire, buying a new car wasn’t an option either because we had three years of finance on it at the time. More than the cost of the repairs and we’d have got nothing for it if we’d tried to sell it.

We’ve learnt our lesson. No cars on finance and no Hyundais!

Wow, that is a lot! I thought Hyundais were supposed to be reliable? I have a 2003 plate Toyota Yaris that I bought second hand in 2010 with 40,000 miles on the clock. In the 15 years I've owned it, it has needed new tyres on various occasions and the battery replaced once. I think one time it needed something with the handbrake sorting. And that is it. It has been an amazing car. My dad has been driving it as a run around since I moved to London and even he loves it.

It came with 5 years warranty. The engine had a piston blow a hole in it just before Christmas when it was just out of warranty. We went to Hyundai for any factory goodwill due to it being only just out of warranty and low mileage for age. They wanted us to pay £1000 for the investigations and even then they said factory goodwill was unlikely as they’ve seen cars rejected even in warranty. Their treatment of us was lacking! We won’t be buying from them again.