Recommend me a car that will fit 3 baby seats

Looking like mrs cloudnine and me have had another accident..
The beloved audi A4 estate has to go as we need a vehicle that will now fit 3 baby seats. Top of my list is a VW Touran 2.0tdi.
Any other suggestions on a decent MPV 7 seater car around the £10-12k mark??

How about a T4 (or T5) Caravelle/Multivan ?

If i can find a decent Kombi or T5 i would love one.
We do already have a T4 LWB Kombi which is ever so nearly a full camper*

(*ongoing project)

Honda FRV?

3 full sized seats in the back with isofix

actually better than that – get a caravelle.

Dave

mrs cloudnine and me have had another accident..

i’m not having 3 accidents 2 is enough- snip snip.. Touran is nice car though, bit bland but does what is says on the tin.

Which group are the seats?

Oh.. and also needs to fit a Labrador and several Sherpa loads of baby/toddler paraphernalia

Congrats! Trod the same path. SMax here – it’s fine generally with three independent isofix seats in middle row.

Mondeo and E mercs can do it as well, but not as well as rear seat is bench.

Does anyone actually use the rear row though.. seemed like a good idea at time.. mostly just takes up space, but not really short of it.

Caravelle/kombi might be nice but different kettle of fish when I looked..

The problem is you cant fit 3 baby seats alongside each other. We have 2 Conchord Ultimax seats in our A4 and you cant even fit a passenger between them.

We have a Touran, it won’t take three child seats – the back seat is three seats, but only the outer two have isofix and the middle one is quite skinny so while it’s more spacious (can fit an adult between the kids seats) you won’t get another child seat in there.

The fold up seats in the boot (to make it 7 seater) have limited leg room, will be great when the kids are old enough to not need seats but we don’t use them much at the moment.

Mate has an S-Max, not checked it out properly yet but it looks massive so that may be the way to go.

An ex-colleague had to persuade his wife they were never going to have a girl.
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.
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After they’d had six boys.

He could only buy cars from commercial vehicle offerings….

Tiguan VW

have a look at a Fiat Multipla. It has three adult-sized seats in the back and you can offset the middle one to allow for more “elbow” room, so it’s likely to work.

When we got to three kids we went the big 4×4 route, 2 Mitsubishi Shoguns did 10 years and 225,000 miles. That was back in the day before IsoFix and the high road tax mind you.!

We have triplets who at nearly 9 have been though all the different types of car seat.

We started in a Volvo V70 and could get three rear facing baby carriers in that. The only way to do it was to use one make (Britax, from memory) for the two outside seats and another (Graco?) for the middle one. If we tried three of the same make the ‘sticky out bits’ would clash.

We reckon the other cars that would have been wide enough were Mondeo, E Merc and Saab 9-5

Then Mrs Higs wrote it off so we got a Ford Galaxy (old VW Sharan shaped one). We had that for a while and got three across the back as they progressed from baby carriers through to high back boosters.

Then it died – head gasket and other things – when we were skint so we got a Renault Grand Scenic. That’s a pile of shit and almost certainly wouldn’t take three seats across the back.

We’ve also had a couple of Saab 9-3s during this time and they would just about get three seats in but we lost the skin off our knuckles clipping/unclipping them.

My wife has a mondeo and i can confirm it will take 3 kids seats.

we can get three child seats in our Zafira.. I’m not sure if I can recommend one though..

Berlingo has three adult sized seats in the back with 3 , 3-point harnesses. Bloke at work sticks his three kids in no bother.

Oh.. and also needs to fit a Labrador and several Sherpa loads of baby/toddler paraphernalia

You might as well forget about “cars” then I would reckon.

You may be able to squeeze it all in, but it won’t be comfortable.

How about a low mileage T4 Caravelle that’s been well looked after ?

Loads around within your Budget, and will last for years, and hold value well.

Or if you are adventurous and don’t mind LHD, a 150bhp T4 Multivan from Germany.

Easily withing Budget, drives superb, loads of power but doesn’t drop the MPG below 45 very often (even combined)

I bought one in Berlin a few years ago and I love it.

Mazda bongo.

More seriously my brother’s in the same boat – has a Fiat Multipla which they love and looking to add a 4×4, for some reason they’re looking at a Jeep so presumably that’ll take their 3 kiddie seats…

Cloudnine.

Clicky

We had three under four, so similar issues of ‘oooops another’ and ‘oh the car aint big enough’…
Make sur eyou buy small car seats – some are huuuuge and oversized IMO. We could fit three in a Passat, but reaching one of the belts was awkward.
The Touran is much better for seats, and boot *is* big enough for all the gear a family need, again if you think about not having stoopid over sized buggies.
We use a roof box occasionally for a holiday, so 5 of us, 3 kids, bikes, the whole nine yards all fit in a Touran – I suspect most peope drive round in cars bigger than they *really* need for 99% of the time.

I’ve seen it done in a Focus but they looked like quite small seats- with the ones I just put in my friends’ car we definately couldn’t have got 3 across my Focus, and they don’t seem untypical.

Honda FRV – I’ve had mine for over 6 years now. Bought for exactly the reason you outline. Absolutely faultless and you can pick up a good one now pretty cheaply since they stopped making them. Bags of room for 3 baby seats. I’ve had six adults in mine comfortably.

i’m not having 3 accidents 2 is enough- snip snip.. Touran is nice car though, bit bland but does what is says on the tin.

+1, snip and Touran, got both (was not going to have a third). Touran will take three child seats and the boot is good. We’ve got the 7 seat version bluemotion diesel version, fuel economy is very good as well, can genuinely get 60 mpg out of it on long motorway journeys. Looked at the S Max but it was a lot more money and the extra seats were a pig to put up and down (wife got one jammed in the dealership, we left the salesman trying to unjam it), they’re dead easy in the Touran and give a great boot space when down. The other thing to bear in mind if you intend to keep the car for a few years is the extra fold away seats in the back mean you can take a couple of extra passengers out for the day, be it grand parents or kids friends plus your family.

*raises hand to snip and Touran as well*

Do it properly and get either an smax or galaxy. We have three under 7 and large car seats. They fit fine

+1 we have three under 5 and a new shape galaxy and it’s great. I’m getting hydundi i800 as for bike transporting / camping / weekend duties, that has 2 isofix in the second row.

Not bothered about isofix all round as we have 2 conchord ultimax seats already which ratchet down onto the seat and are really secure… IMO the best non-isofix seat you can get.
Nealglover.. Thanks for the link.. any idea what the autobox is like on the T5?

3 child seats, in an A4? You can get 4 in there.

Toyota Verso will, we had 3 in ours on occasions.
Galaxy obviously will. Love our Galaxy. Just so practical. Take the third row out & a double buggy goes in fully upright. 🙂

We’ve had a Ford S-MAX[/url] for 5 years and it’s brilliant. Although we only have 2 kids at the moment we often take their friends or relatives with us and with three full size seats there is not problem getting three car seats side by side. This means you’ve then got the massive boot to carry things. And if you need to carry more people the boot seats pop up very easily. The leg room is not huge for the third row passengers but our two boys are absolutely fine (eldest is 6). I’ve even had a full car of adults and they are comfortable for short journeys.

As the other poster said the Ford Galaxy[/url] is great too and if you need to use the boot seats often then it’s worth looking at. If you just need to use them now and then I would go with the S-MAX as you still get plenty of space and a great car to drive.

Hope this helps

Suggest a used builder’s transporter – with luck they’ll have left a couple of bricks in the back………….