[quote=sdrealtor]
It’s just a car and won’t change anything. That is unless you’re the parent of young children. Then it’s life altering. Minivan is the only sound choice in that case[/quote]

That’s not my experience, unless you have have enough rug rats to go from man to zone defense. My credentials: two teenagers born 2.5 years apart, for maximum baby/car seat time. Our oldest was actually aged out and then was legislated back into a car seat.

The best car experience we had, including various rental cars & minivans, for our two-car-seat years was our 2006 “Popemobile” Scion xB. The rear passenger doors and back seats were roomy, with ridiculous headroom. There were fewer places for an errant dirty diapers and assorted baby junk to hide, too. Finding somewhere to park was laughably easy and we hardly had to do a jot of work beyond maintenance on that car until my wife totaled it in 2015 or so with 110k miles–and we got 56% of what we paid new in the settlement!

The next car wasn’t bad (2013 Kia Soul+), but still better than a minibarge overall.

Everyone brings up road trips in this context. Only people who can’t do math go on long road trips in their own cars. We rent. This means we randomly end up in BMW X7s or whatever while paying the minivan price or less. We pay the extra insurance and don’t sweat it when some homeless guy goes nuts with a metal implement on the windows & windshield while we’re parked at Fisherman’s Wharf in SF.