What car to rent for bike box

tunney

I need to fit three adults, an infant in a carseat, suitcasesm buggy and bike box in a car.

Which of these cars would have room?:
Ford Focus Estate
VW Passat wagon
Audi A4 wagon
Ford Mondeo SW

mloc123

Mondeo sw has quite a small boot afaik, the passat and a4 are basically the same car and I'd say are your best bet. Alot of rental companies offer roof bars which could be your safest bet.

I presume you'll have a baby seat on the bike too?

Del2005

You'll need a van type car. Most rental companies only rent classes, so if you book the Mondeo you could get something similar but totally unsuitable. Not too sure if they would allow you load stuff on the roof, as there's too much chance of damaging the car.

hunnymonster

I've a focus estate and I need to drop the back seat(s) to get the bike box in.

I agree with what was said about classes. I've never gotten the car I booked and it's usually a smaller car "in the same class" that arrived. Only exception is the USA where we are usually offered a tank no matter what we book.

--amadeus--

Your best bet might be to book something in the MPV (not mini MPV) class. With a 7 seater (eg Renault Espace) you can drop the last two seats and have a pretty big load area and it's usualy pretty flat (unlike in an estate where you often have intrusion from teh suspension). And MPVs tend to be pretty uniform in size and shape, unlike the smaller estates, so a change in model won't matter much. Lastly they mostly give you the option to fold down the rear seats independent to each other

Muckie

Volvo estate, some amount of space inside them,
plus the new model 1.6 diesel is very cheap to run.

tunney

--amadeus-- wrote: »

Your best bet might be to book something in the MPV (not mini MPV) class. With a 7 seater (eg Renault Espace) you can drop the last two seats and have a pretty big load area and it's usualy pretty flat (unlike in an estate where you often have intrusion from teh suspension). And MPVs tend to be pretty uniform in size and shape, unlike the smaller estates, so a change in model won't matter much. Lastly they mostly give you the option to fold down the rear seats independent to each other

So something like http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/carreviews/newreviews/207294/volkswagen_touran.html would be out as it is a mini MPV I think?

--amadeus--

tunney wrote: »

So something like http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/carreviews/newreviews/207294/volkswagen_touran.html would be out as it is a mini MPV I think?

Not a car I know (I was delighted to get rid of our Espace when our sprogs got out of buggies so I don't know much about MPVs!) but thats kind of halfway house AFAIK. You should be ok though, assuming you're flying you won't have *that* much crap with you...

dna_leri

tunney wrote: »

So something like http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/carreviews/newreviews/207294/volkswagen_touran.html would be out as it is a mini MPV I think?

Touran is a mini MPV based on the Golf Plus, probably not what you need.

You might get better advise over on the motoring forum.

KentuckyPete

tunney wrote: »

I need to fit three adults, an infant in a carseat, suitcasesm buggy and bike box in a car.

Which of these cars would have room?:
Ford Focus Estate
VW Passat wagon
Audi A4 wagon
Ford Mondeo SW

Tunney, of the ones you list, the VW Passat Estate is by far the most suitable - it has a good bit more space than the others. (Swift aside to remember a mega tour of the west coast in the early 90's in a Passat estate - we lived, ate and slept in the thing for two weeks - you could sleep fully stretched out when the back seat was down) Avis usually offer it as a specific choice. You can always put some extra baggage in the back seat as you'll only have the sprog and one adult in there.

As Amadeus says, to be absolutely sure of getting the space you want and then some, get an Espace or a Ford Explorer. They have a huge boot and while you won't be setting any land speed records you will be certain to fit all the kit. The Espace also has some cool features like mega sun roof, more cup/bottle holders than you'll ever need and being able to turn the front seats around if you're having a picnic in the car.

You're right to avoid the mini-MPV - they're not great on storage space. For example, Toyota tout the Corolla Verso as a family 7-seater but there's feck-all room in the boot.

I'd avoid SUVs - the lower end ones are all show and don't have serious boot space.

Enjoy the spin - I hope you get time off to spend on the bike

griffin100

When going to Valentia recently I got myself, the Mrs, three kids, a bike (not in a box though, wrapped in pipe foam) and two sets of wheels and all associated luggage including a buggy into the boot of my Toyota Corolla Verso with the rear two seats dropped. Tight fit but doable. I think most 7 seater MPV's would be similar if you drop the rear seats as the boot in the corolla is acutally quite small compared to other MPV's. Only thing is that 7 seaters are just so uncool for ubercool triathletes:pac::pac::pac:

tunney

Went for a ford galaxy, think that that should do it. Hope so anyways.

Prices are a fraction of what they were yesterday.

Cheers all for the advice!