Five cars great for huge shopping trips

Five cars great for huge shopping trips

We take a look at new cars on sale now with massive boots that are good for any huge shopping trips and other tasks.

Are you on the lookout to buy a new car with a massive boot? Perhaps you’re expecting to make some pretty large shopping trips in the future or you just have some large, heavy items that need transporting.

In this guide, we highlight five vehicles in the new car market with some of the biggest boots around. We’ll cover different categories including estate, MPV and van-based vehicles.

Mercedes E-Class Estate

Of all the estates in the current new car market, the Mercedes E-Class has the largest boot in this category.

The E-Class estate itself is an elegant family car with lots of standard kit and an attractive selection of engines, ranging from frugal diesels to potent petrol units.

The boot, meanwhile, offers a sizeable 695 litres as standard and the rear seats can be folded nearly flat to increase total load capacity to 1,950 litres. You could probably fit at least a few weeks’ worth of shopping with that amount of luggage space.

Ford S-MAX

The seven-seater Ford S-MAX MPV is a likeable family people carrier with fun driving characteristics and a lot of versatility.

The interior is another one of the strong points of the latest S-MAX, offering great visibility and plenty of space, particularly for those in the front or middle row seats.

Boot capacity is 285 litres when all seven seats are in use, but fold all the rear seats down and the capacity increases to a whopping 2,200 litres.

SEAT Alhambra

The SEAT Alhambra is a big, seven-seater MPV that has won many awards for being a very practical, user-friendly choice of family car. With that in mind, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to learn that the Alhambra also has a decent sized boot.

Load capacity at minimum is 267 litres with the all the seats in place, while the total goes up to 809 litres with the two rear seats folded down. Fold the second row of seats down as well and you get 2,297 litres of room to play with. Even better, the sliding rear doors of the Alhambra also gives you a big and very accessible way to the back. 

Mercedes V-Class

The V-Class is based on the latest Vito van but can seat anywhere between six and eight people within its giant upmarket interior. It’s one of the most practical choices you could make for a family car, but true to its van roots it’s also handy if you have something really large to transport.

The boot of the V-Class can hold 1,030 litres even when you have all the seats in place. If you remove the rear chairs then the load capacity increases to a gigantic total of 4,630 litres – more than twice the capacity of two Ford S-MAX models.

Hyundai i800

Hyundai’s i800 is very similar to the Mercedes V-Class mentioned above, being a van-based MPV that can seat up to eight people. This Hyundai, however, is a much more affordable alternative, starting at just under £25,000, whereas the V-Class is priced at £42,000.

While you can tell that the i800 is less upmarket than the Mercedes, it is still a very practical motor that can prove very useful in the right circumstances.

The i800 is so tall that standard boot capacity is 851 litres even with all the seats up. It’s still well-equipped as well, featuring air-con, a radio/CD/MP3 player and adjustable headrests for all seats as standard.