Six great options for three-kid families

The biggest problem with kids is sleep. You don’t get it. Ever again. Ask us how we know. The second-biggest problem with kids is that they’re always catching some illness and passing it on to you. So you’re always literally sick and tired. We could go on with this list, but let’s cut to the chase and say that somewhere around the 17th biggest problem with kids is space. Or rather, lack thereof.

Your lovely flat isn’t going to cut it when muggins gets mobile. Your cupboards will burst at the joints from a surfeit of nappies, cloths, creams and ointments. And your car, while definitely big enough to carry two adults and the screaming not-adult they now find themselves tasked with, fails to be big enough for the avalanche of appurtenances that come with said not-adult.

Prams that helpfully fold down from pram-sized to somehow-even-bigger-than-it-started size. Baby seats that rival portacabins in exterior dimensions. A nappy bag that, despite requiring a Sherpa to carry, still manages to be overflowing with snacks and wipes and paper underpants with Mickey Mouse’s face on the derriere.

So you’ll need to find a car that most resembles a C-130 Hercules. And there really is only one car that fits the bill: the Skoda Superb Estate. Remember that old game you played in high school, seeing how many friends you could fit in a Honda Civic? Well, there’s a reason no one plays that game with a Superb – you’ll run out of friends before you run out of space. So it’ll happily swallow the Silver Cross Deuce and a Half, the Britax builder’s shed and the Mary Poppins nappy bag. And, of course, your darling not-adult.

According to JATO, a company that does automotive business intelligence, more than 40 per cent of cars sold in China in 2018 were SUVs. This poses a couple of questions. One: what in the giddy heck is business intelligence? And two: how big of a market is this “more than 40 per cent” of, anyway?

Um, the biggest car market in the entire world, it seems. Since about 2009, when the American economy had a heart attack and car sales dropped by about six million compared to pre-financial crisis levels. So while the SUV trend – and the tummystick award for ‘biggest car market’ – has more than a little to do with Americans, the fact remains that the biggest slice of the biggest pie in the entire world is reserved for SUVs.

With that in mind, it’s time to recommend a car that a Chinese family blessed with some... um, extra family will actually consider. At least a 40 per cent chance, right?

At this point, we’d usually recommend a Range Rover because we’re a) British and b) care about SUVs about as much as the umpteenth series of Masterchef, so we just pick the one we actually remember off the top of our heads. But then we thought of the literally millions of Chinese people who won’t read this article because it’s blocked in their country and decided that, should they breach the Great Firewall, the least we can manage is to not be flippant about things.

So, being a) British and b) making a particular effort to be genuine for once, we’re going to recommend the Land Rover Defender.

It’s better than the Discovery and bests everything up to (and possibly including) a G-Wagen in an apparent disregard for the surface under its tyres. Unless our hypothetical dad tries to recreate that scene in Dante’s Peak and literally drive through lava, chances are he’ll be fine and/or dandy in a Defender. And that’s before we even mention the interior goodness.

That goodness comes from an interior that’s as ruggedised as its exterior and a near-abundance of space. There’s room, not just for Pooh Bear, but for everyone from the 100-acre wood. And possibly the actual 100-acre wood. After you effortlessly mud-plug your way through it, of course.

Unless your day job is crossing the Darien Gap, snowplowing in Tuktoyaktuk or taking sulfur samples at the top of volcanoes, estates are generally the most useful vehicle in the entire world. But there is one shining exception to this rule: the Ford S-Max.

A Euro-only hybrid of van, estate and TARDIS, the S-Max follows the traditional Ford Europe doctrine of being far better to drive than the situation – or indeed buyers – ever called for. But, as we’re the sort that would mandate that everything up to a canal boat should be fun to steer, we’re exceptionally on board. Yep – all of us. We all fit, after all.

So it drives better than any SUV and matches or bests the majority for space, too. And with flat-fold seats in the second and third rows, it’ll convert into a van for trips to the Shanghai IKEA. And then return trips to drop your Friheten back when it’s inevitably far worse than it looked in the store.

But with all the seats up, there’s room for Mum, Dad, Favourite Child, Never Again and Drunken Mistake, as well as both kids from the Two-Is-More-Than-Enoughs next door and a whole medium hatchback’s worth of luggage space.

OK, but what about if this hypothetical family of five were comfortably well off? And what if they noticed how the air tends to look in some of the biggest cities in the world when everyone with a pressing need to be somewhere they’re not hops in a diesel- or petrol-powered vehicle of varying quality and age? Then they’d need some kind of electric estate. Y’know, like everyone in the world actually needs, Tesla. One that doesn’t cost as much as a Porsche, but has great battery and motor tech, extensive charging infrastructure and huge factories dedicated to electric car production, Tesla. Like a Model 3 wagon perhaps, Tesla.

But, rather than pick on no one in particular for a car that Tesla should really be building, let’s instead turn to an electric estate that already exists: the Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo. Yes, it’s a name only slightly longer than an Icelandic volcano, but the car it describes is of a calibre that makes you sit back and quietly ponder what the hell we were doing burning prehistoric plankton in the first place.

Even the slowest version fires you from a complete standstill to very much not a standstill in 5.1 seconds, according to Porsche. And Porsche is in the habit of playing it pretty safe with those numbers, so that’s the absolute worst you could expect to get. Spec out the full-turbo-nutter version and you’re getting there in 2.9 seconds at the most. This is not the performance of an estate. This is not the performance of even a performance estate. This is the performance of a proper supercar. One of the serious ones, too, like from McLaren or something.

“But hang on a minute,” you might be thinking. “Don’t Taycans only come with two seats in the back?” And to a large extent, you might be right. But before you dismiss the Taycan outright, a few points. Firstly, Porsche does offer a 2+1 setup, so your least-favourite offspring of the moment can ride in the centre seat. Secondly, when have you ever heard of a three-kid, one-car family? And thirdly, would a third child really bring you as much joy as a car that manages to be a Porsche, a wagon and a supercar all in one?

Say what you will about American cars; it’s impossible to get more car for your money. At least, in terms of linear feet of car per dollar spent, it is literally impossible to get a larger amount of car for a smaller amount of hard-earned.

The Chevrolet Suburban springs to mind, by virtue of being the size of some suburbs. We venture that it’s not what Chevy intended the car to represent, but then we never expected a 19-foot car to be marketed as an urban runabout to bulldozer mums and helicopter dads. And blame modern-car bloat all you like; the Suburban’s been a leviathan since the 1930s, when it trundled out into Grapes of Wrath era America as a wagon body stuck on a truck body. This vastness and... er, technological conservatism kept up throughout most of its life. Case in point: independent rear suspension was introduced for the 2021 model. Not a typo.

But now that the Superurban has joined the rest of us in at least a simulacrum of the 21st Century, we can now recommend a literal truck-wagon to Chinese couples who likely won’t have three kids or the opportunity to buy an American V8 leviathan. It’s all part of the patented* Top Gear consumer advice.

*Definitely not patented

So far, we realise that we’ve been far too narrow-minded. We’re a bunch of car writers, working for a car website, so of course muscle memory is going to kick in and send us off on a hunt for cars that fit the bill. Some would accuse us of thinking inside the box. And we can cop to that. But what if the box were so big that you never needed to think outside it?

There are a number of buses you can drive with just a car licence. Some you can even do so legally. But let’s not wade into the quagmire of the licence classes of countries that aren’t our own and instead focus on the perfect bus for the forward-thinking family man. And, presumably, bemused family woman.

Such as the Toyota Coaster. Have we picked this because multiple Chinese companies build unlicensed copies of the third-generation Coaster (i.e. the one you’ve likely ridden in) to this day? Um, no, not really. Just another one of life’s coincidences. But that does at least mean that, unlike the Suburban, your average Chinese family has a chance of actually buying one.

At this point, you might be thinking that buying a legitimate bus as a family car is a somewhat extreme solution to the family car conundrum. Well, it might seem that way unless you’re willing to do some serious inside-the-box thinking. Like we did.

As we’ve said many times in the past, space is the ultimate luxury. Now imagine this scenario: waiting for muggins at cello practice/football tryouts/a Magic the Gathering tournament. What’s better – waiting in a car, or catching up on some sleep in your own bed? And now method starts to shine through the madness.

The Coaster is a common platform for camper conversions, due to it being a) quite large on the inside and b) generally unbreakable. So you could fit yours out with space for five in ultimate luxury, plus a full bed, a kitchenette, and a place to play guitar/video games/pachinko or whatever it is that you’re into. If it’s an indoor activity and of a sort that’s unlikely to get you arrested or banned from a country club, you can do it all in the comfort and space of your own converted Coaster.

OK, so you know how we sometimes pick something really dumb and then entertain ourselves by trying to defend it like a PhD? We may have done a little too well on this one and slightly convinced ourselves that this is actually a fantastic idea. Hm. One moment, please – just checking how much old Coasters are...