Do I want to move up from a small car to an estate

[Annwfyn]

So, my much loved skoda fabia is about to turn 11 years old and is beginning to get a bit more difficult to get through its MOT every year, so DP and I are considering getting a new car.

We currently have our eye on upgrading to a Skoda Octavia, probably an estate. The pros for that are that we tend to use our car for a fair few camping trips and it would be nice to have the extra room for tents and stuff. We tend to head out for the country at least once every couple of months and we are thinking that maybe we should think about a car which can fit four people plus tents and air mattresses etc comfortably instead of us all being squished to hell and back.

However, I'm now having a panic. I've never driven an estate before - it's always been small cars for zipping around town and I'm wondering how much I'm going to need to relearn everything, especially things like parallel parking.

Has anyone made the leap from a small car to an estate and how difficult was it?

I had a toyota yaris 1.1 07 plate for afew years and before that a 1.2 V reg clio.

Then i had a baby and traded my yaris in for a ford focus 1.6 2012 plate.

Its a much bigger car!!! All parking etc was fine. Took a week to get used to the change

I went from a Yaris to a VW transporter van to a Ford Focus estate.

The estate is obv easier than the van to reverse park, but harder than the Yaris. When I say its harder I can still do it. But there are some spaces I can't get in which I could have done with the Yaris purely because the space is too small for a long car. But if the car can fit in its probably no worse reversing an estate into a tight space than it is reversing a Yris into a tight space.

It does have parking sensors which are good. Best thing was a stick on parking mirror for the back window. Cost £3 I think.

There is nothing to relearn, all the principles are exactly the same. As with any new car, you need to adjust to where the four corners of the car are in relation to what you can see from your driving position.