Quote:
Originally Posted by bagofpucks
We still have a ton of friends that insist their family is too big for a van and they NEED the big giant behemoth SUVs that are out there. We recently got back from a trip and our car service from the airport both ways were brand new suburbans. It was hilarious just how much bigger those things were than our van, but how small the interior was comparatively. We had two adults, two kids, 3 big suitcases and 4 various bags and the only benefit to the suburban was slightly more leg room in the third row at the expense of less useful cargo space in the back.
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We have a Suburban-ish car for our family hauling duties and there is no way the cargo space in the back of a minivan is more useful. Granted, our use case is a little exceptional... 2 adults, 4 kids, usually an extra friend or two, two dogs, etc...
We originally wanted a van to replace our SUV as our family grew. Test drove them all, even ordered and had a deposit on one (the then-new Pacifica).
As luck would have it, we had a two week trip to Ontario planned that summer and figured it would be a perfect time to get some real world experience living with a van as our rental... Of course, the rental place didn't have a van in when our flight arrived and could sense the disappointment, so offered an Expedition Max... Just as we finish loading it up, the rental clerk calls and says they just got a van turned back in and it was ours if we wanted it. Since we really wanted to experience the van, we accepted and unpacked the Expedition... Lo and behold, we couldn't fit everything in the van, while with the Expedition, we still had room for a Costco run on the way to cottage country.
Vans are great at two things; hauling 7 people,
or hauling the "stuff" of 7 people, but start to struggle if you want to do both at the same time (which is kinda the point), so require a compromise on one of those metrics to really shine... 4 people and the stuff of 4 people in your case - easy peasy. Admittedly, the non-extended wheelbase large SUVs face the same compromise between passengers and cargo capacity, and in that case, the lower floor of the minivans will provide more cargo space.