1. Dacia Jogger
It’s just impossible to ignore the Jogger when it comes to affordable seven-seaters, even if it does occasionally feel a bit “route-one football” when it comes to recommending it. Banging the Jogger drum again, eh? Yawn … The thing is, this really is a remarkable car. Dacia asks only €26,990 for the most basic Jogger, which does indeed come with seven seats as standard, and that’s something that no other car maker with a seven-seat model can offer.
The nearest alternative is the Citroën C3 Aircross hybrid for €28,990, but the caveat there is that the Citroën’s third-row seats are incredibly small and cramped. By contrast, the Jogger can fit full-sized adults in the third row, and those adults can get comfy. Basic 1-litre versions with a manual gearbox can be hard to live with on a long trip, but you can step up to the impressive new 155hp hybrid model if you want a smoother driving experience. Those third-row seats lift out entirely to reveal a massive 699-litre boot, and you can even get a fold-out bed for the rear seats that turns the Jogger into an ersatz camper van. Honestly, it’s a tough car to beat.
2. Kia PV5
So far, we’ve only driven Kia’s oddball, but characterful, PV5 van in five-seat passenger form, but it’s so wildly spacious that it was always obvious that seven seats would fit. Well, that seven-seater PV5 is on the way, and they should be landing in Ireland right around the time you’re reading this. We don’t have finalised prices yet, but the PV5 is so reasonably priced already (from €42,550) that it’s unlikely to be a budget-buster. The seven-seat model seems aimed at taxi operators, with an odd 2-2-3 seating layout that allows you to step through to the third row without folding or sliding the middle seats.
Still, wouldn’t that be great for family life too? The PV5 is interestingly quirky to drive. It’s tall and chunky, like the van that it really is, but it has an incredibly tight turning circle and is (whisper it) even quite good fun to drive. Range isn’t spectacular – 412km, and the seven-seater loses about 22km of that – but it’s enough to get by with, and nothing else is as enormously spacious for the money.
Wild card: Used Mercedes-Benz E-Class Estate
Back before the MPV or the seven-seat SUV was a thing, if you needed to carry more than five people at once, you either bought a converted van, or you bought a Mercedes E-Class Estate. Nowadays, Mercedes has sadly dropped the option of the extra folding, rear-facing, seats in the boot (we wonder how they perform on the NCAP test?) but you only have to go back a decade or so to find an E-Class wagon still fitted with these handy extra pews.
They’re not massive seats, so this is very much a “when the kids are small” option, but nothing else with seven seats gives you quite the smug value of a big old Benz estate, and when those seats are folded away, the boot is massive, and the driving experience is delightfully smooth and comfortable. Watch out for a full service history (avoid any E-Class that doesn’t have one) but you can pick one up for around €14,000, for a 2014 model, with plenty of life left in it.
