Family car

[LotisBlue]

We desperately need a new car but I'm not sure where to start.

We have two DC in car seats, and like camping. Would an estate be a good plan? If so which one? Looking at buying something second hand for up to 5-6k.

Does an estate have that much more boot space than a regular car, if you don't pile everything up so high that you can't see out of the back window?

Thank you!

I also have 2 DC in car seats and like to camp. I bought my Passat estate last year for about £6k 70,000 miles I think and I love it, particularly the reversing camera! It has lots of boot space.

Estate cars are great. And you can have fun referring to them as shooting breaks, too! I've had a succession of them from various manufacturers, and the advantages are:

big boots which you can load reasonably high, particularly if you have appropriate mesh dividers;

vast space when you put the back seats down to fetch stuff from Ikea

Easy to put a roof box on, particularly if you have roof rails

Not a 4x4 and not an MPV, so you don't look like the sort of person who drives a 4x4 or an MPV. Estates are classless, therefore secretly smooth.

Passats are barges but are huge, Octavia estates are a lot bigger than you might think, Mondeo estates are beyond vast inside, Vectra estates are surprisingly nice to drive, C- and E-class Merc estates are like the Tardis, both in terms of space inside and in terms of their willingness to do intergalactic mileages (a friend of mine has one with 300k miles on and reckons it's now just about run in), BMW estates are smaller on the inside than you think and not as well built as they should be. There's still joy in a Saab 9-3 or 9-5 estate, if you're up for the fun of maintaining them, too.

I've just bought a Focus estate and love it. We holiday in the uk and so need the extra bootspace. Boot is a good size, certainly enough for us and car is lovely to drive. Given that you're camping I'd size up and go for the Mondeo estate which is huge and should be just as good to drive. It was just a bit too big for us.

Thanks all, lots of options to check out

Have a look at the Octavia hatch back as well as the boot is huge - don't necessarily need an estate.

We have a mondeo estate. Perfect camping car!

Get a Volvo estate they are as strong as a tank , plenty of space too

We have a V60 currently and it's amazing we love it.

Loved my VW Sharan. It can be a 7 seater (sounds mad but brilliant to have the option), loved the pull out side doors, so kids cant damage other cars etc with over enthusiastic opening. Loads of boot, did 2 house moves with mine, its just an awesome all round great car.

Lots of ideas here, so if you can, go and look round a car supermarket.
You'll get to see lots of cars that might fit the bill, and be able to rule out those that won't.

Octavia Estate - huge, love it. We're on our third (DH gets a new work car every 3 years, can never find any reason to get anything different). We regularly fill it with camping gear, bike stuff, both DC, bikes on roof....

Thanks all. Dp and I kept ourselves entertained on the m25 gridlock this afternoon by looking at all the different types of car we could buy

We did that for a year and drove ourselves crazy. I'm still doing it even though the car is bought and I'm not in the market for another!