Is there a decent car that has 5 seats? I have an Audi A4 that needs replacing, there is no equivalent (Merc/BMW/Audi) that actually seats 3 in the back as they all have a central arm rest. I could get a LR Discovery or similar but that'd be so ridiculously expensive to run that I couldn't do it.

Surely the armrests fold up into the seatback. Or is the problem the little hump between the two bucket-like rear seats? Is your A4 different in that respect?

Depends on what you mean by decent. Every car I have ever owned or rented has 5 seats (okay, excluding track day hires)

If decent means can go over anything - Range Rover or Land Rover
Performance - Subaru or Mitsubishi do good cheap powerful cars (see my sig for my favourite)
Luxury - dunno, don't do luxury cars :-)

The armrests fold to form an uncomfortable hump, it's even worse in the much larger A6

What model year A4 do you have that doesn't have this problem?

Love the Disco 4, and my favourite go over anything vehicle (G Wagen) is available in RHD again, but fuel consumption is just absurd.



Never liked Mitsu's (apart from my L200) both the Forester and Outback have a hump in the middle as well as being hugely ugly, and not in the way that my G Wagen used to be. I'd possibly go for a Golf R20 if it wasn't so much money for a 4 cylinder hatchback (no idea what the back seats like).



I guess I'm looking at a "luxury" car, but preferably A4/3 series sized, wouldn't mind going up a size if it had 5 proper seats in the back.

Guess I could sell one of the kids...

I don't, see above.

Oh, sorry. I misinterpreted what you meant.

No probs, the wife has a VW Touran which has 5 proper seats but I get a nice company car every few years, it'd be much more useful if it could seat us all.

The Forester I have, and the Imprezas before that have no hump in the middle, however you are right about the ugly :-)

Back seats in a Golf are excellent for such a small car. If you are looking at R20 range you are in a better place with VW than Audi cost-wise.

I don't know of any 5 seat luxury cars in Audi A3 size though. I tend to think A6/A8 for executive class, at a much better price point than BMW/Merc etc

Would avoid all Lexuses (Lexi?) though - never driven one with any performance to speak of.

And they look passable



That's advances for you, uglier and less useful.

I had an A6 Allroad last year as a courtesy car, the hump was even worse than my A4 and the thing's the size of a supertanker. Ditto E-Class and 5 series. Can't stand Lexus/ii

I seem to recall my friend's 4-door Volvo (several years old) had a central seat position in the back rather than a hump. I'm not 100 percent certain about that.

My 2000 Honda Accord SE 4-door is not bad in this regard: The center spot in the back seat is quite livable, and what hump there is, is quite soft.

Hmm, that's 10 years ago. I'll take a look at the latest version.

These the last few cars I've owned or driven/ridden in regularly:

Toyota Highlander (my current car) - definitely seats five. Seats seven, actually. but I frequently have stuff in the back so the third row stays down unless necessary. The second row has a middle portion that's exchangeable. It starts with a full seat that folds down into an arm rest. When I don't want the seat and want to make it easy to climb in the third row, I take the middle seat out and stow it away under the center console in front, where a tray comes out and goes where the seat was. It's a little weird to explain.

Honda CRV - my wife's car. For a tiny SUV, it has plenty of nice features, and easily seats five. I'm a big fan of it, and it's a heck of a value.

Honda Odyssey - my last vehicle. Loved it. Again, that sat seven, and a full seven.

Now the less helpful...

Mitsubishi Eclipse - did that have a back seat?

I'm pretty sure if the Impreza WRX STi still had the pre-bubble mobile style, I would have gotten that when I was shopping for a new car earlier this year. I lusted after that car/style for years.

I gave my fully PPP'ed up Impreza to the wife, as after the 2001 model they became much uglier and with a worse power to weight ratio. Obviously the best was the P1 but they are getting rarer quite rapidly.

The core reason for the Litchfield Forester STi was because they didn't do an Impreza with decent enough performance.

View of all three of these cars here: http://moblog.net/view/884682/subarus-stationary - not that ugly really :-)

I quite like the Forester STi, but then I guess the mpgs are probably worse than a Discovery...

I'll take a look at Honda, we don't have the Odyssey here, or the Highlander

Yeah, thats the model that I absolutely loved. A few years ago they started putting pink STi stickers on the bubblemobiles. Ugh.

Latest Accord and CR-V both have a hump in the middle

I wouldn't call that much of a hump. It's not like the seats next to it, but I haven't seen any vehicle smaller than a minivan with three distinct seats in the back. I assumed we were talking about vehicles with reasonable rear-middle seats...

I wonder if there's a styling difference between European models, and North American models?

Is there a car model, regardless of age, that has appropriate back seats?

Citroen C6?
Volvo S80?

All cars I have ever owned have had 3 back seats. I have never driven a car with arm rests in the back, not sure if that would be on anything smaller than a minibus.

It might be that the European and US markets are very different here...dunno

It looks like there's an additional engine option on the European CRV, but I can't find any resource on the web to see what the interior looks like. It would be helpful to hear, tahir, what you define as a useful third rear seat...

The new 2.0 Diesel Forester doesn't look too bad and is reasonably powerful and very economical.

That new Subaru diesel engine is actually pretty good (for a diesel) and it has kept the boxer, low CoG setup the petrol engines have, so cornering is still tight.

I'll try and find a pic

That car is beyond ugly, HUGE in comparison to the old one, and doesn't have 3 proper seats in the back. I really wanted to buy a diesel Outback or Forester

Admittedly, it doesn't have the style of a Duesenberg, but I wouldn't call it ugly in comparison with some other modern cars.

So have you found a suitable car yet?

When I first saw this topic, I was going to post Touran, a workhorse we've been more than pleased with, with, not only 3 good rear seats, but another two casual ones behind: Then I noticed that it had already been mentioned.
Some time back, I was given a book of ugly cars, mainly European, and I hate to mention that I'd owned one of them: No name given!

Yeah, the missus has got one. It's OK but seeing as I have to change my (company) car anyway it'd be nice to get one that can seat 5 comfortably.



Allegro? Princess? Ambassador? Camargue...

Heh! The Aztek's my favourite of those.



So far the Discovery is the only (what I'd call) nice car thta I've found with 3 proper seats in the back (well there is the G wagen but it's even more ridiculously expensive/uneconomical), the new model CRVs etc all have humps in the middle. The new BMW X3 will allegedly have 3 seats so I might wait and see what that's like. My preference would be for a nice "normal" car, not an off roader. Makes me feel like buying a Merc W123.

Funnily enough, I've driven all those cars, either as hire cars or by way of business. The Camargue was a shambles, even the people at RR generally hated it: The same basic design, as an upmarket Fiat, looked exactly right. Farina wasn't it?

The book I referred to was ctually called "Crap Cars" and it did include a few Jap cars, but I'm remaining tight lipped!

Was it a Brit?

Ital? (Farina made me think of that)

A hefty clue: If you had a motorhome, what would you tow?

N.B. If you look at the grille on a Camargue, it's the only RR ever that has the radiator other than vertical.

The Disco 4 is a good vehicle if you want an off-roader style with upright seating for good visibility in traffic (plenty of them never see the dirt). The 3.0 TDV6 diesel is powerful and quite economical considering the boxy shape it has to push through the air and all the extra bits it has to rotate (constant 4wd). Good for towing too.

Ours won't see much dirt if we get one, we have an L200 pickup for farm work, so no towing either (mind you that's only taking sheep to slaughter twice a year). That's why I'd rather a non 4x4. I'm still no wiser, although the missus says we should look at the Volvo XC90 (another 4x4!)

Knowing nothing about motorhomes, and next to nothing about Jap cars, I'm (not for the first time) clueless.

The Camargue was exceptional in it's ugliness, I can't think of a single redeeming feature, although there was an attribute that meant you could win against just about anything else at Top Trumps (can't remember if it was cc, RR didn't publish hp at the time did they?).

Nothing worse than trying to photograph one on a sandy beach: RR insisted on having the symbol on the hubcaps the right way up, so somebody had to take one off without leaving footprints in the sand. Eventually, the penny dropped that, if you synchronised front and rear, and then drove the car carefully 20-30 feet forward and stopped at the critical moment, you could achieve this.

Aren't the Roller hub caps set up so they always sit right way up? i.e. they don't actually rotate and are on some really good bearings so for the most part they don't rotate.

I was thinking of suggesting this. I've got an XC90 and love it. They do come in non 4x4. The 5 cylinder is best, as it comes with an AW trans (the 6 comes with a chevy trans that explodes, and the 8 is a yamaha motor).

Mine's not got everything I didn't want... no 4x4, no sunroof, no third row seat. It's the most basic model, and still has most anything you would want.

The wife likes it as well.

Well I've just found out I can get £10k off an XC90 (25%!) so best we get down to a Volvo dealer for a test drive.

Disclaimer: I'm a Jeep guy

It's hard to quantify fun per dollar, but IMHO I'd definitely have to get a Jeep Wrangler Unlimited. Slight hump in the middle, but I could live with that. Having the options to go topless and doorless rules.

Definitely check out the 2011 Grand Cherokee too.

They are on the new BMW era ones, think that was a new feature though.

Quite so, but it was an ongoing project when I was at Crewe, as was the retracting silver lady!

Topless and doorless, in the UK????

I've only been there twice, once in March and once in the middle of summer. It was nice weather both times, but the time in March was a little cool to go topless.

I suppose it's a bit like Seattle there where you've only got one nice month or two?

A pic of my nephew and I in Salisbury last time I was there.

Perfect day to drive around topless and doorless.

The last time I was anywhere near Salisbury I had to ring someone to place an "emergency accommodation required" post on the Downsizer forum, we were travelling from Oxford to Bath and the roads were completely flooded, spent hours trying to work our way through all the closed roads before giving up.

Got an XC90 on rental booked for next weekend, will let you know how it goes.

I think you'll like it. Mine's got way too much power for a front wheel drive car, so take it easy at first.

Yeah, we liked it. The engine's a bit agricultural around town but liveable. Very comfy and a really relaxing car to drive.

Translation?

Rough!

Yup, I think a V8 would suit it nicely but dread to think what the mpg must be like.

Ah, how I hanker for my 15 years as a Range Rover driver, on the other hand, we decided that it was ridiculous having two gas guzzlers parked outside, when one of them goes no further than a 12 mile radius, so I've swapped my convertible for a Suzuki Alto auto: Cheap on everything and no worse for all those short trips.

Even the turbo 5 cylinder is a bit much power for the (essentially) front wheel drive xc90.

The 5 is a real Volvo motor with a good AW trans.

The 6 is a real Volvo motor coupled with a very weak GM trans (stupid).

The 8 is a Yamaha motor. They are not without issues...

I'm happy with the T5 xc90. I'm thinking of buying a C70 before Geely starts making Volvos out to ToFu.

I didn’t think you could have too much power in a car.

That would be like having too much money.

I suppose a front wheel drive could be a handful.

I only owned one front wheel drive (besides 4 wheel drives). Hopefully it was my last. I really got tired of changing CV joints and boots. I still have the scar from the last 2:00 AM thrash.

You've seen this then?

It's amazing how good fwd cars are nowadays, my sister in law has a Golf GTi with 230bhp, no torque steer, very easy drive

No complaints on FWD here. My del Sol is supercharged to 185whp and a new helical LSD is fun, too.
I drive about 350 miles a week and often spiritedly through the hills.

My Taurus wagon went over 200,000 miles, including half a dozen Alaskan winters with 40 below zero (and colder!) temperatures, and is still on the original axles and boots.

tanstaafl.

Well don’t buy a 1981 Pontiac Phoenix (for a lot of reasons :-).

Actually it was a fairly good car. I got 220k miles out of it until the clutch gave out again and I decided to use the motor in a jeep. Those Iron Duke 4 cylinders last forever.

The worst car I ever had was a 198? Chrysler Lebaron. That thing fell to pieces before 100K.

Handily you can plug in any FAT32 USB device and it'll work, as long as there are less than 60000 tracks and 500 folders (bit of a pain as I've got lots more than 500, guess I'll have to sort my directory structure)