Car advice - family of 5

Earlier T8 models have a tendency for the electric motor to fail - I believe the revised T8 motor is meant to fix it.

V90 cross country would have been my choice had mrs spleen been happy with an estate.

Ye that's the situation I'm in at the moment, I liked the look of the v60 but missus doesn't like the thought of driving an estate around and wants to stick with SUV. To be fair, she will be driving it a lot more than me, so I only have so much leverage ...
 
Ye that's the situation I'm in at the moment, I liked the look of the v60 but missus doesn't like the thought of driving an estate around and wants to stick with SUV. To be fair, she will be driving it a lot more than me, so I only have so much leverage ...
Yep that was the same for me - it’s predominantly her car so she had to be happy with it. To be fair, I actually prefer driving the Discovery to my Golf R the majority of the time. Maybe a sign of my age now!

See if you can get her to try a full size Disco.
 
My missus wants one of these next.


A lot of car for a family.

Or even a V Class.


Both make a lot more sense than a SUV and you still get that "superiority" to other road users driving a "large" vehicle.
 
My missus wants one of these next.


A lot of car for a family.

Or even a V Class.


Both make a lot more sense than a SUV and you still get that "superiority" to other road users driving a "large" vehicle.
I like the idea, and I've always wanted a VW Transporter (one of the family orientated ones), but I don't think they're as practical as a daily driver.

Budget doesn't stretch far enough at all but I think the VW ID Buzz is awesome.
 
I like the idea, and I've always wanted a VW Transporter (one of the family orientated ones), but I don't think they're as practical as a daily driver.

Budget doesn't stretch far enough at all but I think the VW ID Buzz is awesome.
The smaller versions are more daily drivers
* Honda stepwagon
* Nissan Serena
* toyota estima
 
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The cars you are looking at in your initial post are all too small IMO. If most of your journeys involve carting the family around, I’d recommend a larger car or 7 seater. I have two kids and we even found our Volvo V90cc to be tight on longer trips. Just changed to an XC90 and we all love it. Having the extra seats means dad taxi duties are easier, and the ability to chuck in loads of the crap that the family generally carts around with a full passenger load is great. I never wanted an SUV but having bitten the bullet I’ll probably not go back until the kids flee the nest.

Have a look at the XC90, MY18 or newer.
 
The cars you are looking at in your initial post are all too small IMO. If most of your journeys involve carting the family around, I’d recommend a larger car or 7 seater. I have two kids and we even found our Volvo V90cc to be tight on longer trips. Just changed to an XC90 and we all love it. Having the extra seats means dad taxi duties are easier, and the ability to chuck in loads of the crap that the family generally carts around with a full passenger load is great. I never wanted an SUV but having bitten the bullet I’ll probably not go back until the kids flee the nest.

Have a look at the XC90, MY18 or newer.
I do like the xc90, but I don't it's workable budget wise, it looks like they start at about £650pm with £2k down
 
The missus poked her head around a friends Discovery Sport and ultimately she has fallen in love with it (probably watched too much TOWIE).

It looks like it's workable budget wise, and you do seem to get a lot for your money, especially with the 7 seater variant. There's a boat loads of diesels, less petrols but the petrols seem to be cheaper? My main concern is around reliability and on going costs, I've heard some horror stories on the reliability front.

The diesels there are more of due to the government convincing everyone diesels were better.

However The diesels are horrendously unreliable, snapped cranks, cams and faulty egr valves aren't uncommon, they also do not like short journeys (school runs popping to he shops) the petrols are more reliable, try getting the 250hp model gives that bit extra torque that works wonders on a car this heavy.

The gearbox is a zf unit and is buttery smooth.

In the same vein as this you should check out a lexus rx450L H, looks like a few that squeeze in budget and are a much more reliable version of the land rover, certainly wouldn't ever be wondering if its ever going to break down and cost you a fortune, lexus are consistently at the top of the reliability charts, unlike land rover whom are firmly towards the bottom.
 
I'm not up to speed on which models do and don't have it but one thing to be wary of with diesel Land Rovers is the twin turbo variants can be ludicrously expensive to fix if the turbo(s) go which isn't uncommon on those used for not much more than the school run. The EGR issues can be annoying but not usually too much hassle/cost to fix.
 
Some good advice cheers!

That clears up some thoughts I had around diesel, most of the journeys will be short around town and school run (10 mins each way). Longer journeys 30mins plus probs once a week at weekends? I don't want any DPF issues, or have to blast it down the motorway regularly just to keep it ticking over.
 
No Peugeot 5008 love? 3 proper size seats in the middle row and top spec has enough tech to be interesting. Boot massive as well with the 2 seats down in there.
 
Some good advice cheers!

That clears up some thoughts I had around diesel, most of the journeys will be short around town and school run (10 mins each way). Longer journeys 30mins plus probs once a week at weekends? I don't want any DPF issues, or have to blast it down the motorway regularly just to keep it ticking over.
Then definitely get a petrol (or electric) car otherwise you will experience DPF and EGR issues on most diesels with that usage.
 
Little update, finally got round to seeing some cars today. Of the ones we saw, the discovery sport was a favourite by far. The flexibility you get with the various 7 seater configurations is nuts and would suit us really well.

We also saw a Tiguan Allspace, which again had great 7 seat configurations and probably more space than the disco sport, but it didn't feel anywhere near as premium overall.

The biggest issue we have now is that we wanted petrol, due to mostly doing school runs and around town with the occasional longer journey. However there is literally only 23 approved used petrol discovery sports in the UK, versus hundreds upon hundreds of diesels.

The salesman said that the whole diesel short journeys and the DPF issues is a myth, but of course he would, he's trying to flog a car.
 
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The diesels don't have a great rep tbh.

But at the end of the day it's up to you, they don't all have issues.

LR say services should be 15k or 12 months, I'd strongly advise having the oil changed every 6 months with the whole car service at 12 months.
 
The salesman said that the whole diesel short journeys and the DPF issues is a myth, but of course he would, he's trying to flog a car.

Yes and no - it is generally not as big an issue as many people make out but it isn't a non-issue either.

For a lot of modern diesels the advice is generally in the region of don't regularly do journeys of less than 10 or 15 minutes or with an average speed of 10 or 20 MPH or less (depending on car) and for some diesels at intervals of around a few hundred miles you might need to do a journey of 20 or more minutes at a minimum of 50MPH to complete a regeneration cycle (it is generally advisable to do it anyway).

Things get a bit more complicated with some models of Discovery Sport because they can't do passive regen or can't do it properly and if you don't do a long enough journey (40-70MPH for 30-40 minutes) to do active regeneration every 120-250 miles! it won't maintain DPF health.

EDIT: Through work and other stuff I've experience of quite a lot of diesel vans doing anything from lots of short journeys to lots of motorway miles and none have had DPF issues, but EGR issues are not entirely uncommon. One of the vans is on 220K miles with the last 20K just doing multiple 2-3 mile journeys a day and is still on the original DPF AFAIK, first gear is pretty much trashed and it has been through more than one EGR valve.
 
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Really useful info, cheers! There's defo petrols out there but just surprised how little there are. I guess most opt for a diesel for this type of car.

@Sirrel Squirrel Not not stumbled across the Merc no, will take a look.
 
Really useful info, cheers! There's defo petrols out there but just surprised how little there are. I guess most opt for a diesel for this type of car.

@Sirrel Squirrel Not not stumbled across the Merc no, will take a look.
Yep, avoid Disco sport diesels, same for Evoque, transverse engine means dpf is located miles from the engine, so can’t passive regen and fails active regen too easily.. just do a search, complete nightmare, and we‘ve had plenty of people in work affected, super high adblue consumption, which dilutes the oil, so that has to be changed, then DPF issues…

Some went for BMW x3 2.0/3.0d and same short journey use with no issues at all..

Did you rule out the Kodiaq? They are huge, and have good petrol 1.4tfsi options..
 
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