Starting a family: Do you really need an SUV?
About to spit out a child and deliver humanity a higher population count? Buying an SUV is seen as the price of admission to Club Breeder. Be smart and you’ll save as much as $10k - here’s how…
The obsession with SUVs has reached fever pitch, a bit like the unmistakable howl of a mother at 39 weeks, rippling through the corridors of the maternity ward at 2am.
This idea of increasing your familial headcount equating directly into needing a transport device proportionally bigger in every direction has got to stop. How small cars got big >>
If you've been an over-enthusiastic breeder, and now it's time to pay, good news: Kia Carnival is here to save you…
You might be counting the weeks and days before discovering the trials and tribulations of what 10 different types of baby poo actually looks (and smells like), you might think you’re about to be Dad of The Year for the next 10 years running, but you might be about to drop yourself into a financial crater.
See, about 15-20 years ago safety improvements started to overtake the importance for bigger engines and self-indulgent transmissions, which led to vehicles overall getting bigger to accommodate safety equipment, people and their stuff. But the perception of size has not changed with the times. Unless you’re expecting triplets (there’s a 0.3 per cent chance of that) or more, you probably don’t need an SUV. Period. (If you are expecting triplets or more, check out the Kia Carnival before anything else >>)
I get a hundred different flavours of this same question every month:
We're about to have a baby and it's time to upgrade the wife's VW Golf GTi to something bigger and safer... She's big on design, sunroofs, boot space (and) the upper limit of my budget is around $35K… at a time where we're going down to one income.
ANSWER
How unlike a woman to want it all, despite racing up to a cliff of impending financial constraint…
So let’s weigh this up in the domain of objective facts: $35k is insufficient for a new/demo sporty, hi-tech, fully loaded, panoramic sunroofed SUV that’s objectively larger than a Golf (which is really a conventional ’small car’ segment entry like a Kia Cerato, Hyundai i30 or Corolla/Mazda3, etc. It’s a complete industry misnomer because the so-designated ‘small’ cars really are not that small.
Here’s the evidence: In 1985, the gorgeous Holden Commodore VK was considered the family car du jour. Today a Kia Cerato sedan is considered a small car. The Cerato is just three inches shorter - but it has a longer wheelbase, so more cabin space.
And the 1.5-litre turbo engine in the Cerato makes 75 per cent more power than a six-cylinder Commodore back then, despite being less than half the cubic capacity - but I digress. Cars have come a long way.
Back to the demands of the sunroof-infatuated car-nut brand snob wife: Medium to large SUVs under $100k are not going to be as sporty as a Golf GTI. Obvious conclusion: It’s time to compromise.
Crunch time
How can a big, burly, high-riding SUV like the Kia Sorento or Mazda CX-9 possibly be overthrown by the likes of a weedy little hot hatch with coasters for wheels and a mail-slot for a boot?
The old Golf Mk7 offers 380 litres of boot space (rear seats up) with a 1272mm wide cavity and a floor which lowers 100mm.
Fact: The Golf and all other cars in this segment are large enough for a baby capsule, a pram, a suitcase and shopping. Especially as the rear seat split-folds.
My advice is: Get a pram and some shopping bags, and a suitcase, and experiment with the Golf. Leave the kerbside rear seat up (because you want to be taking your kid out of the car on the kerbside, for safety) and fold the other part of the rear seat down - that gives you 1558mm of boot length.
Some fast facts here: Golf is 4268mm long, CX-5 is 4550mm and Kia Sorento is exactly 4.8m, so you’re adding 350kg of kerb weight for a CX-5 and half a tonne for a Sorento, paying for worse fuel economy, with bigger pricetags, spewing out more emissions - when the car you already have will do the job.
Cars in this segment are also quite safe >>
That Golf has 1272mm of width to accommodate 60-70mm of pram width. It also scored a near-perfect five-star ANCAP safety rating when tested back in 2013 - 35.92 out of 37.
Guess what! All that baby-related crap fits - without leaving the baby compromised. While we’re on the topic, you should study up on child seats and their installation here >>
So I’m really not seeing an objective reason to upgrade, beyond just a personal preference to join the ‘I spat out a baby and bought an SUV’ club.
If you still want to force yourself to splash out on a big expensive SUV with all those materialistic extras (sunroof et al.) then expect to be eating two-minute noodles for the next two years and have fun washing reusable cloth nappies overflowing with every shade of poo on the light spectrum.
Do remember: a nice, sporty SUV with all the toys - like a Tucson Highlander or a CX-5 Akera - is going to be around $50k. And that’s $15,000 more than you want to spend, on the cusp of sucking it up financially and going down to one income, at the same time as bringing a money-sucking diminutive human home from hospital.
Rational thought
Here’s the explanation behind wanting all those bells and whistles on her next new car: an SUV.
She loves her VW, but I hate everything they stand for so I refuse to buy one. She likes the look of the Kia Sportage and Kia Seltos (the Seltos is more in our budget) over the Mazda (CX-5) and we haven't looked into much more than that.
ANSWER
Kia is one of the mainstream carmakers I recommend - they’re great in terms of quality, warranty and support. Seltos and Sportage are roughly the same size as a Golf, except for a small difference in height - which is the least useful cargo dimension.
Also consider:
Hyundai Elantra sedan: $38k Sports Premium: 4.62m length (with 2.7m wheelbase) and 458L boot space, 140mm ground clearance.
Kia Cerato sedan: $33k GT: 4.64m long (same 2.7m wheelbase), 502L boot space, 135mm ground clearance.
Mazda 3 sedan: $41k G25 Astina: 4580mm long (2.7m wheelbase), 444L boot space, 150mm ground clearance.
Subaru Impreza sedan: $34k 2.0i-S: 4625mm long (2.67m wheelbase), 460L boot space, 130mm ground clearance.
Golf is 4.268m long on a 2.626m wheelbase. And Seltos is 4.370m long on a 2.630m wheelbase.
It’s a 10cm difference in overall length and no tangible difference in wheelbase. (Pro tip: wheelbase is an excellent barometer of passenger space in the cabin.)
Sportage is 11.5cm longer again than Seltos, and just 4cm more in the wheelbase. A fully loaded Sportage GT-Line (petrol is recommended drive-away at about $49,000).
Negotiate right and you’d probably get one for $45k, which is still $10k over budget.
It’s a hell of a lot of cash to drop on about eight inches of additional cargo bay length over the Golf.
Active measures
These dimensional differences don’t constitute the potential to satisfy the desire for a substantially bigger vehicle with considerably more space (although you can easily fool yourself into thinking they do).
Doing this is a complete waste of cash. And every car dealer on earth is quite happy to see you waste it in this way.
I heard John recently say that it's a myth that you need an SUV as a family car and a Cerato hatch 1.6 Turbo would be better bang for buck - but I'd need to see it to make sure it's "big" enough.
This is an issue like ‘gravity’ or the laws of thermodynamics. It exists entirely in the domain of objective facts. And the pro tip there (speaking as an engineer) I’d suggest just ‘seeing’ something is the worst possible test imaginable for the definitive dimensional analysis (of anything).
Human beings are absolutely crap at volumetric and other spatial perception of this nature. It’s why we invented the tape measure - because people just can’t cut pieces of wood to the same length any other way. Just by seeing it, for example.
It’s why they make bottles long and thin - wine bottles, soft drink bottles, salad dressing bottles - whatever. They are all a very inefficient shape - meaning they waste a lot of material relative to the volume of contents they store. They do this because it convinces consumers they’re getting more… Because they’re ‘seeing’ it.
Please.
Final thoughts
People get out of cars and climb into SUVs all the time, and because the ceilings are higher they convince themselves the $5-$10k price hike over a comparable car is worthwhile.
This happens because it just feels so much more spacious - they’re seeing it - and yet because of the actual dimensional similarity in length, width and wheelbase, the SUV is, in practice, no better at accommodating a new baby and all the equipment the little bastards demand for logistic support.
If you’re a breeder, money is about to be tight. Babies cost heaps, and your total household income is about to be halved. Financially, it’s just not an uplifting time. Don’t do this to yourselves. Breed by all means (not like it’s optional at this stage). Inflict your genes on the next generation. It’s why we’re here after all. Spit out that new kid. Be continuously sleep deprived and wake up every day to crying, feeling like Jesus must have, upon hasty resurrection from death.
But see how the Golf goes facilitating the transport logistics. If it’s really too small, after you’ve actually tried it, with a baby really on board, and all the crap you have to carry (yes - I have done this, but only three times…) Only then put the $35k on the table and upgrade.
The all-new Kia Tasman 4X4 dual-cab ute is finally coming to Australia in mid-2025. The covers are off, too. Here’s everything we know so far