See all Motoring Advice With the impending return to school looming on the horizon, those hectic mornings of rushing around the house trying to get your offspring ready for their day of education ahead will be filling parents with a certain sense of doom. Not to mention then subsequently sitting in clogged-up traffic as every other parent in a 10km radius has to go through the same thing at the exact same times of day.
So allow us to make your life easier by suggesting some big family cars that should at least make lobbing all the kids’ clutter into the boot and then tackling the chaos of the school run that little more palatable. Also, while SUVs are obviously a strong choice in this regard, they’re not necessarily the default answer to everyone’s problems – especially if you have more than three children.
Here’s a list of our favourite ‘back to school’ cars, both new and used.
The best prestige SUV of them all kicks us off. The current model has been with us since 2018, so it’s likely you can pick up earlier used examples for a decent price, but even the Mk3 (2013-2018) still looks modern and fresh, and drives well too. If you want a status symbol for the school run, then the X5 is it – and some of them even come with a pair of (small) seats in the boot for a seven-seat layout for maximum practicality.
The C3 Aircross is a triumph of packaging, managing to squeeze seven seats into the smallest crossover footprint imaginable; that should mean you can park it easily near the school gates, without abandoning it in a dangerous position in no-parking zones. There’s even a fully electric option called the e-C3 Aircross if you want to ensure you’re emitting no pollutants into the air where crowds of schoolchildren are gathering, but if this sounds a bit too pricey then the Mk1 Aircross (2017-2024) is a funky little alternative that should keep parents looking cool for their fashion-conscious kids. It’s only a five-seater, but it has super-soft suspension and a tall ride height to make a mockery of speed humps and other potholes on the way to and from school.
The Jogger is a great example of why SUVs should not be the default answer to practical family cars. It’s a kind of crossover-estate that seats up to seven, yet it’s a budget-friendly choice in the classic Dacia style. Sure, if you’re using all seven seats, the Jogger provides only enough boot space for nothing much more than a sheaf of A4 paper, but it’s really easy to remove the rear two seats entirely – meaning you can configure its interior to your heart’s content to balance out passengers-to-cargo as needed.
If you’ve just got two kids, or just the one, then you don’t even need an estate car or a crossover/SUV for school-run duties. And one of the best, roomiest hatchbacks of all is the Honda Civic. Always easy to drive and fitted with an array of fuel-efficient engines, the Civic will be ultra-reliable so it’s not likely to break down on either the way to or home from school. It’ll also be a doddle to park near the school gates, because it’s physically one of the smallest vehicles on this list. Either the current 11th-generation car (from 2022-on) or the preceding Mk10 (2015-2022) are brilliant motors, but even the Mk9 (from 2011-2015) is modern enough and practical enough to suit smaller families on the school run.
For those with large broods, look no further than the Hyundai Santa Fe. The newest, boxy Mk5, which only launched last year, is a sensational thing that can happily carry five older children in the rear seats – useful if you’re in a car-pooling group with other parents and you’re running their kids to school as well – but if that’s too pricey for you, both the Mk3 (2012-2018) and the Mk4 (2018-2023) would do the job just as well. Also check out the related Kia Sorento through the same years.
A Sportage is a classic, five-seat crossover-SUV. It’s well equipped, it’s really roomy onboard for five people (so it would happily suit transporting older pupils as well as taking younger kids to school), it’s designed to be as simple to drive as possible, and it comes with a wealth of affordable-to-run engines, including hybrid power, that won’t break the bank if you’re driving in congested, urban traffic on a daily basis for school-related purposes. Anything from the Mk3 (2010) to the current, angular Mk5 (2021) will feel up-to-date and useful, and similar to our advice above you should also check out the Hyundai equivalent from the same periods – that being the top-selling Tucson.
The reason the Nissan Qashqai is such a sales success is not because it is tremendously exciting to drive, but because it seamlessly fits into daily life with the minimum of fuss. It does everything capably and nothing badly, and hybrid power makes the existing generation (2021-on) cheap to run in heavy traffic as well. The Mk1 (2006-2013) is a bit long in the tooth now, but if you want a Qashqai on a budget then the admirable Mk2 (2013-2021) is a fine alternative to a lightly used Mk3 from 2021 or ’22. It’s therefore obvious why it’s a school-run staple.
Massive wagons are ideal for school-run parents, mainly because they have huge boots into which things can be flung with no need for ‘careful packing’ concerns – great if your kids have lots of after-school clubs with bulky equipment, like music or sports lessons. And wagons don’t come much bigger than the Skoda Superb Combi. The Mk4 is a jewel of a car with a whopping 690-litre cargo bay, which’d swallow a tuba or a drumkit with no difficulties, but even the Mk3 (2015-2023) has 660 litres of cavern on the back of it, so it’s the ideal choice if you don’t fancy an SUV.
An efficient hybrid drivetrain that’ll allow for more electric-only running than you’d imagine in sluggish school-run traffic, Toyota’s legendary reputation for reliability, and a roomy passenger compartment coupled to a voluminous boot make the Corolla Touring Sports a solid choice for parents looking for fuss-free child transport. Not an exciting car, but an incredibly relaxing and affordable vehicle to drive as recompense.
If you’ve got a truly huge brood of kids, or you’re often car-pooling with other parents, or you only have three children, but they often lug loads of bulky clobber with them, an SUV simply will not do. Instead, you need a van-like MPV, and the Volkswagen Multivan is the best of them. Car-like to drive, it won’t stress you out in urban conditions and its hybrid powertrain options make for surprisingly economical running costs. It’s not cheap to buy, so if you need to cut back on your spending a bit then look for the preceding VW Caravelle instead.
Two VW vans on the same list? Yes, because this one’s electric. Another saintly choice for parents who have a green ethos, the main selling point of the ID. Buzz is that it looks utterly terrific – nothing is going to give you as much street cred with the youthful friends of your children as turning up in this cheerful chariot. At its best in bold two-tone paint colours, the Buzz isn’t massively cheap nor quite as practical as the Multivan above, but it is a hoot to drive on open roads, it’ll be easy to place in more congested traffic thanks to its huge glasshouse and light steering, and it’ll be super-cheap to run thanks to its zero-emission powertrain.
School runs are stressful, right? So a calming car, one with a supremely soothing interior ambience, is sure to help ease away the pains associated with the drama of getting the kids to and from their place of learning. And few modern cars are as energising inside as a Volvo. The best, comfiest seats in the business and lovely wooden trim with light-coloured leathers are very zen, while the V60 is a usefully compact yet practical estate. Get it as the off-road-biased Cross Country, and it has taller, softer suspension for an even better ride height, plus bash-resistant black plastic cladding on its body that should protect the paintwork from the sort of low-speed scrapes and dings that are an occupational hazard of a super-busy school run.