Forum help with choosing next car please.

[STEMO]

Dogs do not travel on the back seats of cars, totally unsafe, despite the fact that you can buy restraints for them. It's just a useless compromise.

[Varche]

Agreed. We have a secure set of bars that seperate the boot atea from the passengers. For distance and the big city trips he goes in there with a proper harness and clipped to the car.

Rightly or wrongly on local trips he goes on the back seat again secured

Tunnie. You might remember i had a Passat 2.0 diesl auto hire car for five or so weeks. I was very very impressed. A petrol estate might be a solution . Never been an estate person though.

[tunnie]

Agreed. We have a secure set of bars that seperate the boot atea from the passengers. For distance and the big city trips he goes in there with a proper harness and clipped to the car.

Rightly or wrongly on local trips he goes on the back seat again secured

Tunnie. You might remember i had a Passat 2.0 diesl auto hire car for five or so weeks. I was very very impressed. A petrol estate might be a solution . Never been an estate person though.

Ah yes. 

I strongly looked at Passat Estate, they could be an option. Also with VCDS/VAGCOM you can easily get full access to car electronics 

[BazaJT]

For a saloon what about a Phaeton?Might be hard to come by in petrol form though.

[Viral_Jim]

Also, given that they are rare as rocking horse wotsits, over a 10+ year period I suspect the cost and embugerance that goes with maintaining such a complex leviathan might not be ideal. Cracking car though.

In a similar vein, an Ls460 could be had comfortably in budget and probably ticks most if not all of your boxes. Feeding and maintaining a 4.6L V8 may not be so easy however 

[Varche]

Phaeton and LS460. Not suitable. Too complex and none available in Spain as of now. Probably maintenance would be a problem too.

No petrol passats of any sort available either in whole of Spain.

[STEMO]

Phaeton and LS460. Not suitable. Too complex and none available in Spain as of now. Probably maintenance would be a problem too.

No petrol passats of any sort available either in whole of Spain.

Hmmmm......Spain......not exactly the motoring hub of the world......

[2boxerdogs]

Friends of ours in Spain have a Mitsubishi Shogun , seems a very good vehicle certainly comfortable & capable. He has had it from new (2009) spoke this morning to him apart from annual services all he has replaced at 24,000 miles are the tyres . With a healthy budget like yours a decent one  is possible.

[Sir Tigger KC]

Dogs do not travel on the back seats of cars, totally unsafe, despite the fact that you can buy restraints for them. It's just a useless compromise.

Chuck the dog in the boot! What's wrong with that? 

[Andy B]

Mercedes R Class 

I might be a bit biased thoughb

[Varche]

Shogun too much like our back up car.

No big Mercedes for sale either in petrol auto.

Plenty of cars in Spain but people just do not sell very often due to the tax that is paid on secondhand sales(about 7% of government book value).

[Marks DTM Calib]

In no particular order...

Seat Altea XL/Freetrack
Opel Insignia Sports Tourer 4x4/ CrossCountry

Or new, Dacia Duster.

Biggest problem you have is finding a used petrol car in that age bracket. Here they are effectively non existent in larger, family sized vehicles

From my hands on experience, you won't get 10 years out of anything with a Dacia badge on it

[tunnie]

Why petrol? Short journeys? 

As already mentioned 2007-2017 nearly all family sized cars are diesel, the petrol ones are very low and massively impact what you can choose from. Instead of 1,000 cars, it's more like 20 

[Migv6 le Frog Fan]

Diesel cars have just become vey anti social. I expect them to be taxed into oblivion in the very near future.

[Varche]

Spot on MigV6

We will be stuick with this car for years. Spain has a lot of cities with bad pollution. Granada and Seville have been picked up by the World health for consistently failing to improve. It is only a matter of time before governments ban diesels from city centres, tax the vehicle and fuel to death etc.

I think the VW scandal was the final nail in the coffin.

Shame as diesel here is cheap compared with petrol.

Had a look at some Altea XL's today in a car park. Still like the Qashqai shape.