I had a three series coupe when Miss Beaker was a couple of years old. Her seat was a pain to move between cars admittedly but it was workable. What’s the harm in seeing how you get on before buying a new car?

That’s huge! Keep it.

I can get a complete bike in my car’s boot, but that beats it hands down.

…oh yeah, and when they start school (comes and goes quicker than you can imagine) you’ll become a taxi service and will need to cart miniRRR + mates around the countryside on a regular basis at which point you’ll need a minibus.
Pre-kids it’s all about you, post kids it’s all about them – which is not a bad thing.

What car are we actually talking about here? Probably not relevant to the discussion, but useful in the decision to mock or sympathise

😆 😉

Me and the wife both had 3 door cars from the birth of julian junior up to now (he’s 3 and a bit now).

I had a BMW M3, and the wife has a Honda civic type R, they were both absolutely fine for fitting him in, no issues whatsoever, despite what all our friends said about having to get rid of it as soon as he came along.

I guess it depends on the exact car in question, but as a rule I’d say you dont need to change cars.

I now have a 5 door car, and I actually find it more of a pain getting him in and out than the 3 door, because you’ve got to lean across to clip the seat belt in, whereas in the 3 door, you just stand in front of him and do it.

We still have the civic and have no plans to change it, like I say we find it easier than the 5 door car.

for the purposes of this discussion thats the same as my M3, it really has not been an issue at all for us. Everything fits in fine, I certainly would not be changing the car simply because its a 3 door.

Roof bars, 2x bike carriers and a long half-width roof box will give you the space you need for a while. Its when your mini RRRs have bikes that you’ll be stuffed. So you are a few years off that.

Probably the biggest issue for now is the kiddie loading in and out and whether there’s knackered back potential. Julians had no probs with this.

pushchair/pram and suitcase in the boot, everything else squeezed in the gaps in the boot. We did deliberately choose a pram/pushchair that folded up quite small, some of the prams/pushchair are massive. On a side note, we found that it was the cheaper prams/pushchairs that folded up smallest, so that was an unexpected surprise. The larger more high end prams were all quite large.

We used a newborn rear facing seat for the first year’ish, this was one that you take in and out of the car with the child. After that we moved to a forward facing group 1/2/3 seat that pretty much stayed fixed in the car ( I think it was a recaro child seat), and just recently we have switched to a cheapo group 2/3/4 high backed booster seat.

I could still fit my bike in the boot with the child seat still in the car, just folded down the smaller of the split folding seats. That way I didnt have to faff about removing the child seat everytime I wanted to go biking.

The e92 3 series coupe has a huge boot. The 5 door car I have now is much smaller.

What I would say is, once you get past the rear facing seat, then just buy 2 child seats and leave them permanently in both cars (assuming you have 2 cars) rather than try and move them between cars.

Practical needn’t be too boring – I have an A6 Avant 3.0tdi V6 multitronic 4wd Black Edition.

It does surprise the Golf GTi drivers 😈

Slightly ironic but the length of the name and you needing to say the length of the name smacks of over compensation.. 😉

We had a Ford Puma for a year with our then 2yr old. It only went as it needed extensive welding. Neither of us blinked at practically as we enjoyed the car too much.

As mentioned ^ with one kid- no problem. With two, I wouldn’t go down the coupe route. It’d be straight into a large Passat estate with a big engine.

We used to fit camping stuff for 4, including event stuff and bikes for 4 in an 03 5door civic with a roof box and 2no. bike carriers. It was a right squeeze though. You had to pack every last bit of cabin volume with stuff. Kids couldn’t see each other as the bit in-between was packed solid. Stopped in car fighting though. 🙂

So its doable, but was always an epic task that required a lot of time.

Fear of your driving?

I had a mk1 Clio 3 door for the first year, and managed perfectly with it. The wife had a Laguna, but even for a week away, the Clio was the first choice, as it was much more fun to drive. Only got rid of it as I didn’t need a car for a while.

Got a Touran and the wife has a three door Golf GTi. We’d still manage fine if we didn’t have the Touran. It’s the decent sized boot you need more than rear doors.

8 years ago I bought a Boxster S. The day after I got it my wife found out she was pregnant with our eldest. I kidded myself that I could keep it as she had a MINI. I sold the Porsche after 8 weeks….

I’ll echo slightly higher cars being easier though. The Touran was perfect when our youngest was a baby as it meant not having to bend down to put seats in the back.

Funnily enough the easiest car the wife ever had for putting a baby seat in the back was a VW Lupo GTi. Yes it was tiny but the doors were huge and the passenger seat went really far forward and near horizontal when getting in back so it acted like a rear facing seat to perch on when sticking baby seat in back. Boot was bloody miniscule though, so that got sold too…