Advice for Kind of Car to Buy

I Bought a Chevrolet traverse this year. It has 3rd road seating and depending on the model it cannseat 7 or 8. Mine seats 8. I have 5 children. And we all fit comfortably. Good luck with you car search! I hated mine! Lol but now I'm happy.

Spirit - Two options - SUV or Minivan.

If you need to cart around 5 people, & travel quite a bit with gear as you mentioned, a Minivan sounds like the ideal option. Plenty of room for all the kids, even adults can be comfortable in the rear seats, and still room for "stuff" in the back. Dual sliding doors can be a real plus as well!

An SUV is likely going to have less room on the inside (especially if you are not going with a Suburban-like vehicle), so you will need to utilize the roof rack for hauling the larger gear & possibly luggage.

There are pluses & minuses to both. Minivans tend to not get as good of gas mileage as a smaller SUV, but to compensate have more room. It depends on how often you travel, vs. using it for every day, and of course, how utterly important every mpg is to you.

Toyota & Honda are known for their safety & reliability in the mini-van department. Subaru (subsidiary of Toyota) tops the charts for safety in SUV, & has similar reliability. The Honda Pilot has also gotten top marks, & is bigger (but loses gas mileage as a result, closer to 20, per a friend of mine)

I have a Toyota Sienna, which is great for its versatility (easily add/remove seating to carry passengers or cargo), and I ave about 20-22mpg. My husband just got a Subaru Forester, and we both love it. He gets 25mpg, so we take his vehicle when we travel distances. And newer minivans come quite decked-out - automatic dual sliding doors, video in the back of headrests, lots of room for the kids to play games while traveling, & not hear "he's touching me!".

For the two of us, they meet our needs (bigger Sienna for traveling with my dogs for shows), but if we had 3 kids, I would say the Forester would require us to utilize a cartop carrier for gear, which of course strips your gas mileage. However, for day to day travel around town, it's quite fun!

I would suggest going to a dealership & trying out a minivan & an SUV, to decide which "style" will suit your family better. Then, follow up with which make/model. Keep in mind, if you are looking @ Subarus, they are "hot" right now. We went to a dealership to see 3 that were listed on their website. One had sold already, one we test drove, & the third sold while we were test-driving!! (these were used, new will be a bit easier because of the inventory)

Happy shopping! T. =-)

After test driving a Toyota Sienna, Toyota Highlander, Honda Pilot, Honda Odyssey, Buick Enclave and Chevrolet Traverse, we chose a Honda Pilot.

It was bigger than the Highlander and plenty roomy even for 13 hour family road trips back 'home'. The eco-mode made gas mileage better than most SUVs. The Toyota Sienna just felt like I was driving a bus, but the Honda Odyssey came in a close second. In the end we chose a Pilot because it seemed to have less road noise (probably due to more clearance) and a 4WD option. We bought it in 2012 and love it.

I love my Suburban. But, I don't exactly get 50mpg! Before this vehicle, I had a GMC Acadia! LOVED IT!!!! I would definitely go the SUV route if you're camping and possibly driving on uneven surfaces.

Toyota Highlander or Sienna, new or used. Used, you can probably knock of a few thousands. Honda CRV is also a winner, if it is large enough for you.

Stick with Toyota or Honda. Both make reliable vehicles that last forever. I would look at their mid-size and large SUVs and see what suits your preferences.

We had a Subaru Forrester and it was a real lemon. I would never get one again. Another friend of mine had issues with hers, too. However, I have relatives who will only buy Subaru.

I did not want a mini-van, but I have grown to love my Toyota Sienna! I have driven many different kinds of mini-vans between work vehicles and rental vans (Dodge Caravan, Kia Sedona, Chrysler Town and Country). For various reasons I disliked all of them. Everything from the way they drove, to the comfort of the seats, to the cup holders, to the amount of cargo space in the back.

I love how much cargo space there is in the back of my Sienna. At one time I was hauling around a sit and stand stroller and a full size single stroller and still had plenty of room for groceries without having to put the rear seats down. We did a two week road trip across Minnesota, South Dakota, and Wyoming last summer. We had more than enough room for a large cooler, two large suitcases, and several smaller duffle bag sized bags. We can comfortably carry 7 people.

We have had many Toyotas in our family (my parents, my husband, my in-laws) since I bought my first one a 1985 Toyota Camry. I think all of them have been driven 10+ years with very few mechanical issues. (My van is a 2008 and I've never had anything more than routine maintenance work done on it.) They are known to be low maintenance vehicles. I can also tell you that they hold up well in accidents. I was recently rear-ended and had about $7000-$8000 damage to the car, but all of the damage was external and to the underbody and exhaust system. It was still drivable.

My gas mileage is very comparable to any other mini-van/SUV type vehicle.

My husband has a Toyota 4 Runner. I like the amount of cargo area, but it is a tight fit for five.

We just bought an 08 Toyota Highlander. Some have 2 rows, some 3. We got three because we needed the option of carrying more people at times. The storage and room is fabulous. It gets 23 mpg and holds 6 people because we have bucket seats on the second row. LOVE IT!!