AndyRKett said:

I do find it ironic that buying a much bigger car like a tiguan doesn't always yield more space.

My Golf Cabriolet has two Iso Fix points in the back, You'd easily get two car seats in, we have massive Joie spinning things in both cars and you could get them both in the golf and still be able to turn them, yet obviously you'd not get a person sat between them (it is only a 4 door car with 4 seats/seatbelts) but the countryman which is comparable in size to the current generation of Tiguan you can still only get two car seats in the back (only two isofix points) you would never get a third and you'd not get someone sat in the middle of them either (assuming they could even get in past the massive car seats)
Even with just one car seat in the back it is a squeeze to get two normal sized people in the back, getting to the seatbelt for the middle person can be very difficult with the car seat being so large.

As kids get bigger car seats get smaller so the situation would improve with time, but in essence for number of people the Golf is no smaller than something huge like big SUV and I can still get 3 suitcases and push chair in the boot of the golf.

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Yep! Pandas on the top!


with a roof box and trailer....

AndyRKett said:

so the only space you can gain is upward and often this isn't usable space. Quoting boot space in litres is usually very deceiving as the shape of the boot has a big impact on what you can get in there.

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Agreed. That's why I prefer the old estate car type bodywork. Our recent gearbox misfortune gave me the chance to compare the Ibiza ST (estate) luggage compartment with the Arona and the Ibiza had measurably greater length and thus "usable" - for suitcases etc - space.

AndyRKett said:

I think the 2002 Golf would be a Mk4 ?? still largely the same size of car

Things like the Golf Skoda Octavia, Audi A3 they are all largely build on the same platform i am sure the scout maybe build on the same ? what ever platform they are built on small cabriolet or "huge" SUV they all fit into roughly the same length and width dimensions. so the only space you can gain is upward and often this isn't usable space. Quoting boot space in litres is usually very deceiving as the shape of the boot has a big impact on what you can get in there. My golf has a very deep/long boot so the push char will fit in front to back and you can still get suitcases down the sides. The mini it won't fit in like that unless you move the back seat forwards which you can do, but the passengers in the back lose all leg room. So the push chair goes in sideways and you can only then get about one suitcase in.

I think the whole cabin on the mini sits a bit further back than on the golf which eats into the cabin space from the front to the back, but overall it is "bigger" because of gains in height.

To make SUVs look right in their dimensions they make them with bit long bonnets., which smaller cars get away without.

Click to expand...

When my middle daughter was moving house/flat they had a MPV of some sort but even with seats in best position they couldn't get four "white goods" (fridge , freezer, washing machine and dryer) in the vehicle, but the old Doblo of mine managed quite well, a good old work horse.

What amuses me somewhat is that in this photo of Giants...where our car looks flipping tiny there's only 2 cars with more seats..also we got away without the roofbox (although if we had 2 kids we'd need one).

Pugglt Auld Jock said:

Agreed. That's why I prefer the old estate car type bodywork. Our recent gearbox misfortune gave me the chance to compare the Ibiza ST (estate) luggage compartment with the Arona and the Ibiza had measurably greater length and thus "usable" - for suitcases etc - space.

Click to expand...

I'm sure top gear did a piece once on why getting an estate is much better than an SUV for space. I am very taken by the VW Arteon Shooting brake, but the price tag puts me off and unless we have a second child we probably don't need that much space.

bugsymike said:

When my middle daughter was moving house/flat they had a MPV of some sort but even with seats in best position they couldn't get four "white goods" (fridge , freezer, washing machine and dryer) in the vehicle, but the old Doblo of mine managed quite well, a good old work horse.

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A lot of MPVs were things like the C4 picasso and the Renault Scenic. my brother at one point had a C-max but they are nothing more than a slightly taller version of the car they were based on in this case the Citroen C4, the Megane and the Focus. The foot print is the same the floor space is the same its just a but taller.

The Doblo on the other hand is a box, designed to be a van and carry a pallet sized load of up to 1000kg. they just slapped a back seat and windows in to make an MPV version of it. Good little vans. The Multipla was equally good at swallowing huge amounts of stuff especially if you took the back seats out and took advantage of the flat floor.

StevenRB45 said:

What amuses me somewhat is that in this photo of Giants...where our car looks flipping tiny there's only 2 cars with more seats..also we got away without the roofbox (although if we had 2 kids we'd need one).
View attachment 422590

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We talked about a roof box for the mini on our March trip, we ended up with so much stuff, most of which was probably not needed given we went to paris in October last year in my Golf and still got everything in. The more space you have the more crap you bring with you.

The additional space distance between back seat and back bumper is what I miss in the smaller car.

In theory the boot is only 40l smaller but the parcel shelf is set a lot higher. This inflates space under the shelf for the litreage but the reality is the recline on the rear seats and decline on rear hatch creates an odd shaped space.

Had the cases against the back of the back seat and against the rear screen standing vertically (5mm more depth would not have shut without removing the back window.) but they are large cases. There was still space in the front of the boot for stuff in the triangle between the floor the case and the closed rear door. Fitted all the coats, the foot pump, spare shoes etc.

The Mazda without the rear shelf was basically an estate car..and with the seats down was a van given it was a full half a metre longer than the C3.

However was sitting behind a similar 3 person family as they packed their Ford Kuga as we all cleared out at the end of a week's hols...at which point I felt better as going to Andy's point f*** me they must have brought everything they own. Particular highlight was a 30 can cube of diet coke.. you're away a week mate..and where you're going there's diet coke. Which probably explains it being unopened. Car was packed to the roof, at least I could still see over my cases.

StevenRB45 said:

Particular highlight was a 30 can cube of diet coke.. you're away a week mate..and where you're going there's diet coke. Which probably explains it being unopened. Car was packed to the roof, at least I could still see over my cases.

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Reminds me of in the 70s a group of lads had come down for a cheap holiday in Torbay in a Mk 1 Transit, whilst repairing it we had to open the back doors, they had a raised bed of mattresses and blankets sat on wall to wall crates of Newcastle Brown Ale, the entire van!
On a different note tell your children to train as Vets, daughters dog just tore a bit of skin off it's leg whilst walking in woods, collect in 2/3 hours from vets £700. !!!

StevenRB45 said:

Particular highlight was a 30 can cube of diet coke.. you're away a week mate..and where you're going there's diet coke. Which probably explains it being unopened. Car was packed to the roof, at least I could still see over my cases.

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To be fair my wife has a very serious addition to Diet coke, so this would not be uncommon for us to pack a couple of multipacks of coke cans for a holiday, that said this is because she drinks so much (multiple cans a day) that buying them in any smaller quantity gets expensive, like it isn't expensive anyway.

All this said there is no way we would be leaving with any of those cans, she would have drunk them all, and probably still need to go and buy more.

bugsymike said:

On a different note tell your children to train as Vets, daughters dog just tore a bit of skin off it's leg whilst walking in woods, collect in 2/3 hours from vets £700. !!!

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I have friends who followed this route, its not the vet who makes all the money. Unless that vet owns the practice, these days a lot of practices are owned by big companies. Ours is a CVS group owned practice. which is a huge Public Listed Company, that turns over about half a £Bn a year A few years back one of my dogs had cancer. We had a trip to the vets, then a couple of days later the dog had to be put to sleep. total bill for that was over £1000.

Pet insurance is largely a con because when they are young and don't need much veterinary care the premiums are affordable, before they get too old and they start needing treatments or trips to the vets they put the premiums up so much its not affordable to have the pet insurance anymore.

you're probably better off putting the insurance monthly amount into savings when they're young for when they get old and need it, that way the premium never goes up and you've always got money to put towards bills when needed.

AndyRKett said:

To be fair my wife has a very serious addition to Diet coke, so this would not be uncommon for us to pack a couple of multipacks of coke cans for a holiday, that said this is because she drinks so much (multiple cans a day) that buying them in any smaller quantity gets expensive, like it isn't expensive anyway.

All this said there is no way we would be leaving with any of those cans, she would have drunk them all, and probably still need to go and buy more.

Click to expand...

Step 1 of packing the car may have been removing the wife's crate of cherry Pepsi Max from the boot..but we took some 2 litre bottles for the fridge which sat in a rear footwell. Strangely enough we didn't bring those back..in the same way as we didn't have bags of uneaten food and many many other things..I swear he had a case branded Makita.

What will we need on holiday dearest? Power tools? Ok..

Our 'communal' punto diesel is around this week.. so I took it to work for a change

A mile into my early morning commute it started to make odd noises :-(

Have I got time to go back and take another car..? Clock says 18:42.. on the 1st of March.. not reset from the battery swap 2 months ago

Check phone.. no time to return.. so an interesting 15 minute trip
Metallic clacking..but only on imperfections in the road

Sounded like dashboard..opened glovebox? No change

Maybe the scuttle..??
Car has done 300 miles in 2 months.. is battery clamp loose.. or even got a missed tool floating around.

Popped bonnet.. battery secure..no tools.. peered into scuttle all good

Full lock applied..tested both droplinks..all good


Odd... I will investigate further once home.


Trip home..windows open as now 10 degrees warmer..

Clatter clatter.. but only on imperfections ( sounds nearer the ground now..through open windows)

Driving nicely.. I am wondering if some wheelarch liner..etc is slack..?

Will raise the car and check

Both wheels slackened.. then up

Front left off.. check droplink.. as it was replaced 1 year ago

All good.. about to replace wheel and move to RHS I spot a segment of roadspring laid at the bottom of damper :-(

LH Wheel back on

Remove RH wheel..as its already slack

Brakes all good. Droplink fine
Segment of Roadspring sat in bottom of damper :-(

This spring is 18 months @3k miles in service

LH was factory fit.. 15 years and 80k


Lousy state of roads currently are potentially to blame . But both breaks were corroded so unlikely to have happened today :-(

Odd as I only ever swapped springs on new purchses.. not broken one myself

Another job for the list !

varesecrazy said:

Our 'communal' punto diesel is around this week.. so I took it to work for a change

A mile into my early morning commute it started to make odd noises :-(

Have I got time to go back and take another car..? Clock says 18:42.. on the 1st of March.. not reset from the battery swap 2 months ago

Check phone.. no time to return.. so an interesting 15 minute trip
Metallic clacking..but only on imperfections in the road

Sounded like dashboard..opened glovebox? No change

Maybe the scuttle..??
Car has done 300 miles in 2 months.. is battery clamp loose.. or even got a missed tool floating around.

Popped bonnet.. battery secure..no tools.. peered into scuttle all good

Full lock applied..tested both droplinks..all good


Odd... I will investigate further once home.


Trip home..windows open as now 10 degrees warmer..

Clatter clatter.. but only on imperfections ( sounds nearer the ground now..through open windows)

Driving nicely.. I am wondering if some wheelarch liner..etc is slack..?

Will raise the car and check

Both wheels slackened.. then up

Front left off.. check droplink.. as it was replaced 1 year ago

All good.. about to replace wheel and move to RHS I spot a segment of roadspring laid at the bottom of damper :-(

LH Wheel back on

Remove RH wheel..as its already slack

Brakes all good. Droplink fine
Segment of Roadspring sat in bottom of damper :-(

This spring is 18 months @3k miles in service

LH was factory fit.. 15 years and 80k


Lousy state of roads currently are potentially to blame . But both breaks were corroded so unlikely to have happened today :-(

Odd as I only ever swapped springs on new purchses.. not broken one myself

Another job for the list !

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I'm guessing you're in Oxfordshire with this? Do you have spring compressors? If you need some, you can borrow mine, and of course anything else required, including the drive if necessary, if it can make the journey. I can bring stuff to you of course. Unless you're in Wales, then I can only offer the severe irritation and hindrance of a brother from the next village up the valley, with constant quips of, "I have one of those tools, in Bristol."
Squeak if I can be of help.

Thanks Nigel

Hopefully the springs I had delivered yesterday.. and the tools I have employed before .. should get the job done

Optometrists speaking out against the brightness of modern lights.


My golf has normal incandescent bulbs which are perfectly capable of illuminating the road well in front of the car but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to see in the battle of the headlights

AndyRKett said:

Optometrists speaking out against the brightness of modern lights.

Car headlights are making driving unbearable, says an eye doctor

If you’ve recently been cursing the brightness of oncoming traffic and worrying about whether your eyes are ageing, then you’re not alone. Earlier this week, the College of Optometrists raised concerns over the number of cars fitted with ultra-bright LED headlights, saying that increasing...

uk.yahoo.com

My golf has normal incandescent bulbs which are perfectly capable of illuminating the road well in front of the car but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to see in the battle of the headlights

Click to expand...

I dont think the issue is the brightness, I think it's the aim or bleed away from the standard pattern that's the issue. I'm not convinced new cars would meet the old MOT spec. Any new car I've had with HID / LED always seem a bit high on the road signs in dip beam.

But I've also got an older vauxhall, and the lights are not great. Mine is better than most of the same type, but the issue is the signle wire connection bulbs that rely on the body and spring for the ground contact. It has projector lenses and people put HID conversions in, the pattern is identical to the normal bulb only proper brightness. So dodgy dim lights are legal, and good bright lights are illegal.

AndyRKett said:

Optometrists speaking out against the brightness of modern lights.

Car headlights are making driving unbearable, says an eye doctor

If you’ve recently been cursing the brightness of oncoming traffic and worrying about whether your eyes are ageing, then you’re not alone. Earlier this week, the College of Optometrists raised concerns over the number of cars fitted with ultra-bright LED headlights, saying that increasing...

uk.yahoo.com

My golf has normal incandescent bulbs which are perfectly capable of illuminating the road well in front of the car but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to see in the battle of the headlights

Click to expand...

Mine too Andy, of the halogen persuasion. I find them more than adequate. My boy's new(ish) A4 is the first car in the "family fleet" to have LED headlights but I've not been out in it after dark yet so can't comment on whether the driving experience is all that much better. I haven't looked into what might be involved in changing a blown unit. Don't even know if you can change just the bulb or whether it has to be the whole light unit (like my older boy's Punto LED rear light. Whatever, I bet it'll involve a lot more dosh than just replacing a halogen bulb in one of the others and it'll be more difficult to do, You'll not be doing it in a motorway service area I'm betting? (I always carry spare bulbs)

I've mentioned before that we do childminding for my younger boy in particular and this involves a journey, out of the city on the A1, then round part of the city bypass and then heading south on the A68. For at least half the year this journey is done in the dark and one thing I've noticed of late is that I'm running into far fewer people driving towards me with their main beams on. Probably due to the increasing number of vehicles fitted with auto dipping? On the subject of these ultra bright LEDs. Mrs J won't drive outside the city in the dark any more and neither will my Brother. I know of a number of older friends who find it challenging. So far I seem to be doing Ok with them. They are very bright and I hate meeting one coming towards you over a rise where the fact they may be dipped makes little difference because it still means you have to drive through the part of the beam which is bright until they are back on the level. I think there is definitely an issue here, particularly when it's raining and heavy traffic is kicking up spray. Keeping your screen clean and wipers in good condition is now more important than ever. I'm often amazed when given a lift in someone's car, how often the inside of the windscreen is filthy! This has to be a hazard after dark.

Pugglt Auld Jock said:

I'm often amazed when given a lift in someone's car, how often the inside of the windscreen is filthy! This has to be a hazard after dark.

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This one, I used to regularly be amazed in slow moving traffic where you'd be looking through the car in front..only to find you can't see a damn thing as the glass is near opaque in low sun.

If I can see it sitting in a different car surely they can.

Pugglt Auld Jock said:

I haven't looked into what might be involved in changing a blown unit. Don't even know if you can change just the bulb or whether it has to be the whole light unit (like my older boy's Punto LED rear light. Whatever, I bet it'll involve a lot more dosh than just replacing a halogen bulb in one of the others and it'll be more difficult to do, You'll not be doing it in a motorway service area I'm betting? (I always carry spare bulbs).

Click to expand...

You'll probably find the Mazda 2 has L.E.D. brake and tail lights as well if memory serves.

To be fair with the Mazda stuff they fail so infrequently that by the time they do you can pick units up from a breaker for a reasonable fee (which is probably around 50x what replacing the bulbs in a halogen unit would cost). Grande is probably similar.. although seem to recall led tail lights are far rarer for those.

The Audi will probably be a case of pay a grand...or get your soldering iron out fix it and then find the car no longer recognises the light and that it needs to be proxy aligned back to the car. Because VW group...

Got to say I've not carried spare bulbs in some years...I used to but they generally got broken before fitting or I'd end up putting them in the glovebox for the next owner having never used them.

Unless you've got a slightly iffy electrical system or have changed for a higher power bulb that burns out faster they don't really seem to go very often.

Also nevermind LEDs causing an issue...its vehicle height. If you're looking at a Range Rover from an ordinary car there's a good chance your eyeline is below the beam cut off.

vexorg said:

I dont think the issue is the brightness, I think it's the aim or bleed away from the standard pattern that's the issue. I'm not convinced new cars would meet the old MOT spec. Any new car I've had with HID / LED always seem a bit high on the road signs in dip beam.

But I've also got an older vauxhall, and the lights are not great. Mine is better than most of the same type, but the issue is the signle wire connection bulbs that rely on the body and spring for the ground contact. It has projector lenses and people put HID conversions in, the pattern is identical to the normal bulb only proper brightness. So dodgy dim lights are legal, and good bright lights are illegal.

Click to expand...

There are two issues with these very bright lights.

There is a phenomenon where if I have something white, and I put that white thing in front of a very bright light. The white thing will be drowned out but the light from behind it and appear black.

So when I am driving a long with my standard headlights throwing light onto the road in front of me, when the car with stupidly bright headlights comes towards me, I cannot see my own headlights past the distances of the oncoming car, which as the car gets closer my viewing distance gets shorter.

Then as explained in the article. If you are driving along in the dark your eyes adapt to the dark light, the pupil opens, same as the aperture on a camera to let in more light. Then you shine a bright light at your eyes they will constrict the pupil to limit the amount of light entering the eye and protect the retina from damage.

In younger people this is fine as your eyes adapt really quickly to changes in brightness but as you get older this process can take quite a few seconds for the eyes to adapt to the dark again. (same as if you walk into a dark room on a bright sunny day it can take a few seconds for your eyes to adjust and the room might seem pitch black for a second or two (we've all done that. )

So you're vision is limited by the bright lights coming towards you, then even further limited once the lights have gone by your eyes having to adjust back - this can lead to quite long periods of several seconds of blindness.

If car headlights where all the same brightness, then your own headlights would be no brighter than those coming towards you and so the amount your eyes would have to adapt would be less and the effect of a bright light against a less bright background would also be less.

When we got our Mini with LED headlights we were amazed how stupidly bright the headlights were, now these seem to be pretty standard on most new cars, yet they really only started introducing them in 2014 and they only really took off in 2016 on most manufactures cars meaning that the main bulk of cars still do not have lights this bright.

I do enough miles in the Dark to have judged some of this headlight tech.

I tend to do 65/70 on endless dual carriageways.. so am only seeing vehicles approaching from the rear ( Blinding me in the mirror..AND making the car interior like daylight)

JLR are nearly all bad , Certain 'German..or VW brands.. Seat are poor

Worst and no shock here.. Tesla.. the headlights rarely point in the same direction.. build quality surely

Notable odd ones : the Jeep thats a 500x
Ford Pickups and that PHEV SUV that sponsored Channel 4 dramas (Outlander..Mitsubishi...?)

Im VERY glad I do virtually no miles with them driving Towards me..or I would see nothing.


Arent the brightest systems supposedly 'self levelling' : aka SMART..

I am still thinking a lot of these are just clueless operators not adjusting the headlight adjusters when laden.. but assumed the Tech should stop this?

I still say it's a matter of pattern than brightness. A laser could burn your eyes out, but if not pointing at you in the dark then you'd barely notice it. I've had a few newer cars and the lights seem to go too far up the road signs compared to older cars.

Yes..the Beam Cut off

My experiences above are obviously where a traditional beam would illuminate the nearside footpath / verge... with the beam being 'trimmed' so this didnt equally illuminate the offside - blinding oncoming traffic

I recall a Range Rover overtaking me on a foggy night

The headlight beam was absolutely horizontal.. so basically perfectly aligned with my 500's roof.... for the next 400 metres !