Voitures 4x4 7 places
Here are the best 7-seat cars on sale in the UK, including the best SUVs and MPVs with 7-seat layouts
If you have a large family, then a 7-seater is the best kind of car on sale to transport them around. In the past, the easiest way to transport up to seven people would've been in a van with extra seats inside. The other alternative was to buy a big estate car with a pair of occasional rear-facing seats in the boot, although obviously this compromised how much luggage you could carry in the back.
But with the arrival in the 1980s of the Chrysler Voyager in the US, the Renault Espace in Europe and Toyota Space Cruiser in Japan, these cars added some car-like luxury to the formula to create the MPV, or multi-purpose vehicle.
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While the original models weren't seven seaters, they soon spawned seven-seat variants, and other models soon followed suit. Cars like the Citroen C4 Picasso (now C4 SpaceTourer), Renault Scenic and Ford C-MAX are now all offered with the option of seven seats, while cars like the Vauxhall Zafira, Ford S-MAX and Galaxy, Toyota Verso, SEAT Alhambra and Volkswagen Sharan are sold exclusively as seven seaters.
But the days of the seven-seat MPV are numbered, as their boxy styling and sensible image is falling out of favour with buyers. Instead buyers are looking at more stylish crossovers and SUVs with seven seats, and there are plenty of those on sale today.
These range in size from models like the Nissan X-Trail and Land Rover Discovery Sport with occasional seats in the back to larger cars like the Volvo XC90 and vast Mercedes GLS-Class. If you want to electrify your driving, then the Tesla Model S and Model Xboth have seven seats, while there are still plenty of van-based MPVs that can offer seven seats on a budget.
Smaller cars like the Citroen Berlingo and Ford Tourneo Connectcan be had with up to seven seats, while larger MPVs based on the Transit Custom (Tourneo) and Peugeot Traveller/CitroenSpaceTourer use their boxy shapes to create huge useable space, and can even offer more than seven seats.
With all of these seven seaters on sale, you need to weigh up your needs against what's available. If you only need occasional sixth and seventh seats, then a smaller MPV or crossover will be good enough for your needs, as they will have decent bot space with the added ability of carrying more passengers if you need to. If you're going to carry more than five people on a frequent basis, then a larger model is going to be the order of the day, while larger families who constantly travel might be better suited to a van-based MPV.
