Thinking about getting an estate. The wife seems to think they are dangerous as anything heavy in the boot can come flying foward as there is only a thin plastic cover covering it. Is she right?

the thin plastic cover bit is horizontal. So it wouldn't be much use against something flying vertically upwards. But your rear seats should be similar to those in other cars ie fairly solid.

Get a dog guard that goes behind the rear seats

get a proper manufacturer fit dog guard and it will stop anything. I have a Audi A4 one in the garage (that I need to get around to selling sometime). Once fitted it would stop a charging rhino. You get used to the rear view extremely quickly.

And don't discount the danger of the flat cap slipping down over your eyes obscuring the road from your sight.

Or threads from your driving gloves getting tangled in the steering wheel.

All very real dangers when you're the owner of an estate car.

Can you still use the thin plactic cover when you have a dog guard installed?

she's already thinking about crashing it?

load net stuff to the floor anchors, better it doesn't move, than try to catch it once on the move

Problem with estate cars you have nowhere to put the cushions ,rolled umberella, and first aid kit,that some people keep on the rear parcel shelf.

I take it you never go on camping trips with stuff packed in, floor to ceiling then?? 😉

Yea a 2 seater convertable is far safer bet 😉

pack heavy, sliding stuff at the bottom, sleeping bags/cuddlies/woolie hats etc on top and make sure (always) that the seats are correctly locked back and jobs done tried the dog guard but that just makes hard to access stuff

incidentally had a flying water bottle incident a couple of weeks back – ped' stepped out (on phone from behind van) and yes i was going slow enough to stop – but slamming on the brakes meant water bottle came firing off rear parcel shelf bounced off dash and hit the little 'un

My volvo has a cargo net you can roll out and hook up to the ceiling, I'd imaagine that most estates can have this thing as an option.

Its a pretty sensible concern, but the parcel shelves in hatchbacks aren't much better, and stringy nets attached to plastic clips aren't going to do much either. In a real shunt anything is going to come through. Heavy items will just go straight through the seats.

The crash test item fifth gear did about loose items in cars, even just shopping, was quite revealing. Although it seems to be the only one of their crash tests thats not up on Youtube

A friend of mine crashed with a boot full of crockery and cutlery once. He was buried in the stuff when the fire brigade cut him out.

Yep, get a Volvo. They are Sveedish, and so verrr verr safe, jah?

It's not an issue, really.

And don't discount the danger of the flat cap slipping down over your eyes obscuring the road from your sight.

Or threads from your driving gloves getting tangled in the steering wheel.

All very real dangers when you're the owner of an estate car.

not forgetting the 7 piece drum kit, huge bag of cymbal stands and other heavy bag of very solid metal frisbees cymbals. Or the guitar amps, guitars etc.

Or the mountain bikes

use the lashing points for heavy objects D'oh

is it me 🙄

Only a problem if you stack things up higher than the top of the seats. In an impact everything will go forwards (into the back of the seats) rather than upwards – unless you roll it

The A4 has a pull out mesh guard thing which feels pretty substantial. ok its not going to stop a trolley jack, but will probably prevent the stray can of beans braining you under heavy breaking. pack sensibly and its not an issue worth worrying about IMHO

Its a pretty sensible concern,

Really?

The heavy thing will vault the rear seats, squeeze between the roof and the front headrests, reverse direction and then squash you into your seat?

A friend of mine is a service engineer so trundles round with some heavy toolkits in the back of his company car usually saloons/hatchbacks has been told to secure rear seatbelts to strengthen rearseats in the event of an accident.
Catches on a lot of fold down rear seats couldn't be described as bomb proof.

How much energy will the rear seat catches dissipate?

My volvo

Now there's a quote guaranteed to get the ladies going

I've never thought about this until the thread. I've folded the rears seats in my Mondy to get bike in the back, filled the car with stuff when visiting the folks etc.

Never thought of pinning it down till now-cheers, and I want an estate!

Earl – Member

Thinking about getting an estate. The wife seems to think they are dangerous as anything heavy in the boot can come flying foward as there is only a thin plastic cover covering it. Is she right?

Just how hard is this impact the wife is going to have?

this thread just reminded me of an incident with a hire van a few years ago

had a XLWB van on hire, needed more toggle poles (7 foot pole with metal spike for edge of marquee), so send a mate back to get them in the hire van as it's empty, he gets back to the warehouse, opens back doors, loads the 500 poles, jumps back in van, heads off fast (it's a white hire van, so doubly fast), gets to first junction, slams brakes, hears a whoooooooooooooooooooosh BANG!

arrives on site, we empty out the van to find a bulkhead that looks like the backdrop to a shooting range – always hired vans with separated cabs after that

ive been to many car accidents and cant recall ever removing bits of luggage from the back of peoples heads 😉

I guess if it's pipes or if the car roles over multiple times or you drive into an object with loose stuff in the back it could be dangerous but are there any stats?

Having just been given a hire car estate for a few days I can confidentally tell you that the biggest problem you'll have is parking up in ASDA. It's a like a freaking BUS!

Our car rolled last summer, after a blow-out. Luckily buggy stayed in the boot ok, lots of kids toys & stuff thrashing around in the car but no injuries except for my arm when my window came in. Kids Birthday cake in passenger foot-well was totally unharmed!!!

flipping is funny, nothing really moved inside when we spun rolled and flipped the discovery and trailer combo over the hedge

and considering the back was full of sledgehammers, 3' pins, pegs, and random outdoor electrics, that was nice

maybe better just to leave the car parked and keep her indoors.

A lot of company estates/hatches cars on big company now have a brace securing the splite rear seats, this is done for insurance reasons. as a tool box in a 30mph impack could come through the seats, this is typical of any car with splite folding rear seats so an estate is no more a hazard than your standard family hatch back,rule of thumb is heavy items ie tools box always put against the rear seat so they are not moving forward before they hit the seat.

Its head on collisions rather than rolls where stuff flies about. Even with a big ply bulkhead behind me I've been pushed into my seatbelt by stuff in the back of my van and not under particularly heavy breaking either

slams brakes, hears a whoooooooooooooooooooosh BANG!

I've seen a truck on the hard shoulder with a big inch thick piece of plate steel sticking out the front out the front of the cab at about driver's knee height. The truck didn't seem to have hit anything else so just the trucks brakes had propelled the steel through the bulkhead and cab. So don't carry boiler plate in the back of your car, or if you do drive with your feet up on the dash 🙂

When we got rear ended before crimbo we near enough got pebbledashed by all the coins, keys, car park tokens, sweets and crap from the cubbyholes and pockets around the dash.

I always make sure any long pointy sticks are either placed diagonally or down the centre line (or behind the passenger seat) in case I get rear ended by a truck. Don't really want to get impaled by a windsurf boom.

Carrying my bike [25lb hardtail] in the back of a ford estate once when I was hit head on by a car overtaking on a blind bend.
It bent the rear seat forward at the top by 2 inches.

My father-in-law is a retired farrier. Years ago he was driving his van with the portable anvil (not very – I can only just pick the damn thing up) in the back when he had a low speed crash. The anvil slide forward and took his seat out of the floor and pinned him to the wheel. Passers by had to get in to move the anvil to get him out. Definitely the days before the HSE.

BTW Earl does your missus drive with anything on the back seats – just as dangerous.

Are you sure that this is not "wife speak" for not wanting an estate?

Both of the estate cars I've had in recent years came with a guard
The current one [Toyota] has a rather substantial one built into the thingy that holds the luggage cover – it simply pulls up or down like a roller blind & connects into anchors on the roof

Earl. Yes, she's right. A few years ago when an uncle crashed his car, his chainsaw left the hatchback boot through the windscreen.

This is why almost all trade vans have bulkheads.

Most modern estates have lashing eyes, which I would use for securing anything loose, especially heavy.

When I were a lad I crashed my dad's car into a tree. (luckily I got hospitalised before my dad could kill me)

His large heavy toolbox came through the seat of the hatchback and ended up in the passenger seat!

I now have a large dog cage secured to the lashing points in the back of my estate and anything heavy gets lashed in that.