How to choose a family car when you have three kids (or more!) by Karen Bleakley at talesofatwinmum.com
Before we had kids, all my husband and I cared about for our car was that it was reliable and affordable. We didn’t look for flashy features – it just needed to get us from point A to point B.
Then we found out we were expecting twins.
We didn’t imagine that going from a family of two to four was going to make much difference to the car we drove. I’d grown up in a family of five and we’d always owned a regular sized vehicle.
We ordered our double pram online and got it set up. We fitted the two baby capsules in the back of the car and tried to put the pram in the boot … only to find that it wouldn’t fit.
After some adapting (pulling out the parcel shelf and some speakers) we finally got it wedged in. Then we realised we had no space for anything else. No room for bags or cases. No room for our gigantic nappy bag. Certainly no room for guests when relatives came to visit.
We put up with it for a while but knew we’d need to change our car soon, as we wanted a third child … which of course meant we needed space for three car seats.
Your priorities about cars totally changes when you have kids, especially when you jump from two children to three or more. Changing cars is expensive and time consuming, so when you upgrade, choose wisely and try to think about what the future holds for your family.
When we decided to upgrade our car, these were our main considerations:
Sliding doors
With multiple babies, we realised how handy sliding doors would be. It makes it so much safer and easier to get in and out on road sides and in car parks.
Boot size
Finding a car with a big enough boot to take a big pram and some luggage as well was essential. Test how much you can get in before you buy the new car!
Future-proof
We had plans for a third child even though we weren’t sure when that was going to happen. Even though she was only a glimmer in our eyes at the time, we thought in the long term so that when she came along a couple of years later we wouldn’t need to change car again. This includes thinking about how many seats you’re going to need, and how many car seats will need to fit in a row next to each other.
Reliability
We asked around to find people who owned the cars that we were considering and asked them how reliable they had been. This really opened our eyes to the things that could go wrong (and how much these things could end up costing!). This process ruled out a couple of cars for us because some seemed to have common issues.
Running costs
It’s important to think about how economical the car is. Don’t assume that all larger cars guzzle fuel – ironically, our smaller car is less efficient than our large family car!
Safety
Last, but definitely not least, we looked into the safety record of the different vehicles. We checked if they had a good reputation and researched what safety features were included.
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