Please help me find a family car!

[HettyB]

Nothing seems to suit our requirements, which are:

• 7 seats
• the rearmost seats must have enough leg room without having to move the middle seats forward (or they can’t fit our car seats in)
• must be able to fit 2x Britax Max Way Plus (etc seats) in the middle row
• no underfloor storage boxes (aren’t allowed with our car seats)
• still has some boot space with all seats up
• budget up to around £15k second hand
• budget must get a second hand car with less than 35k mileage and no more than 4 years old
• can be car or van-based

Does such a thing exist??

Ford Galaxy, Chrysler people carrier (can't think what it's called - Voyager?) are the only two I can think of.

We had a Citroen C4 Grand Picasso, but two of the 7 seats were fold-down ones in the massive boot, and didn't have much leg room at all so no good for you.

I can't think of any others - do Toyota's do people carriers? Can you google MPV or people carrier and see what comes up?

I’ve done a lot of googling but seem to discount most for one reason or another.

The galaxy is one we’re looking at, but they seem to be priced quite high for age/mileage compared to other makes.
I’ll have a look at the Chrysler, thanks.

Have you already discounted the Seat Alhambra or VW sharan? Ours has got underfloor storage but you can buy official fillers which are approved for car seats. (I checked with Axkid and Joie).

Your Max Ways would definitely fit. We've had two Minikids and a Joie iAnchor across our middle row with plenty of room for grandparents in the back row and a Maclaren, changing bag, etc in the boot.

Britax don’t approve fillers for underfloor storage so any car with those compartments is a no-go, sadly.

Your budget is far too low for your requirements

I know. Sadly I can’t magic money out of thin air just yet, but I’m working on it

We’re considering a Ford Grand Tourneo connect. Ugly, but seems like it might suit.

Change of car seat? Britax Two Way Elites don't have a support leg.

Why so few miles and so new? We’ve got a 13 year old discovery with 100,000 + miles on it that still goes great guns and would suit all your other requirements, including budget.

7 seater Nissan trail but you'd have to spend a bit more or go for lower miles

Do you really need the 7 seats as in any 7 seater it's very hard to lift the kids into the back row anyway so maybe reposition the car seats and have the older kids climb into the back row

Xtrail

The kids would be in the middle row, but we’d need the back row sometimes for adults.

X trail is out - went to see it and you have to move the middle seats forward to give the rear seats any leg space, and then the middle seats become much too small for erf car seats. Thanks for the suggestion though - it’s a lovely car!

We may have to revisit the age/mileage thing - we’d hoped for newish and low mileage as that’s what we’ve got at the moment, and we’ve had bad luck in the past with older cars.

Thanks everyone for your help - it’s given me a few ideas.