The Peugeot 2008 is an excellent family orientated SUV with genuine European styling, smart features, plenty of safety technology, and a solid reputation. That’s a glowing endorsement from the outset, but it’s important to state upfront that the 2008 is a great family vehicle. But, is it suitable for a growing family? This is a hard question to answer, and many car manufacturers wrestle with this problem on a daily basis. We’ve seen clever seating options, storage bins, and other ideas that have produced mixed results. Let’s take a look at some of the problems that you need to consider if you have a growing family.
Choose Practicality Over Anything Else
The Peugeot 2008 SUV is a practical car with its storage areas, ease of parking, and plenty of space for shopping and weekend trips. All of this is very useful, and it’s very important to place practicality at the top of any list of needs in a car for a growing family. Circumstances can easily change, some features may be less useful than you initially thought, but solid practical considerations will never change.When you consider a car for a growing family, always look at how you will use the car and how it would work on a daily basis. This is a vehicle that will be used daily for a wide variety of family needs, and it has to work for your particular family. It’s also worth mentioning that your kids will have friends, and they may need to tag along on certain journeys too. Add a pet into the mix, and you’re going to need plenty of passenger space during a typical week.
There Will Never be Enough Cargo Space
If you have kids, you will already know that cargo space will always be at a premium. If you have a larger family or you’re expecting some new additions in the next few years, the need for cargo space will be even greater. It’s astonishing how much stuff kids need on a daily basis for school, hobbies, and trips out. Toys are a huge space killer, especially if you need to take bikes out to the local park or you need all the paraphernalia for a beach trip.Of course, the adults also need some space for their luggage as well, and things can get cramped quickly. A roof box can help, but this will reduce the fuel efficiency somewhat due to the drag created that ruins the aerodynamic properties. It’s not just cargo space either. In the cabin, you are going to need a lot of storage for a wide variety of toy and non toy items such as wipes, nappies, and blankets.
Safety Should be a Primary Concern
At the bare minimum, any car chosen for a growing family must have a 5 star ANCAP safety rating with a recent test score. This will demonstrate that the car is safe to use for you and your family. However, it doesn’t end there is you have kids and/or you’re planning on adding to your brood.Child seats are a huge source of concern for many parents, and there are entire websites dedicated to the subject. This is for a good reason; the survivability of any child in a car crash is significantly improved if they are sat in a good quality car seat. But, that car seat also has to be correctly fitted to the car, and it must be secure. This is why child anchor points or ISOFIX are vitally important for any parent looking for a safer car for their family. If a car doesn’t have ISOFIX point, simply move along and look at some other vehicle instead. Another key safety factor is the number and configuration of the airbags, look for curtain airbags to protect the flanks of passengers.
Many modern cars, including the Peugeot 2008 SUV, now have active safety features to help the driver to avoid road traffic accidents entirely. Some useful technologies that have emerged in recent years, include blind spot detection, lane change warnings, autonomous emergency braking (AEB), and reversing cameras. All of these active safety features and many others are extremely useful for a family orientated driver to keep the occupants of their vehicle safer. Many of these safety features are fitted as standard, but others may only be available on higher specified models or as an optional extra for an additional premium.
Choosing a Car Using “Primary Use” Logic
There is a case to be made for choosing your family car using primary case logic to arrive at a final decision. Essentially, this involved looking at how you use your car now, examining what you need it for, and then extrapolating on that to add kids into the equation. This is faulty logic because you cannot predict how your life will change after you have kids. Perhaps you won’t have time to go surfing, or you may be able to swing it on Sundays? Who knows how the future will pan out next week never mind over the next few years of car ownership.However, there are a few educated guesses that you can make to narrow your search for a vehicle that will suit a growing family. As an example: it’s likely that any weekend trips or vacations will be family affairs rather than a bunch of friends. So, if you were considering an all wheel drive vehicle for extreme off roading that’s probably not going to be on the cards. In this particular case, an AWD may be overkill, but perhaps soft roading to a beach or favourite picnic spot is more likely. In this particular case, there are many 2WD SUV type vehicles or crossovers available, including the Peugeot 2008.
Thinking about what you want, then what you need and how you can reconcile the two viewpoints is an extremely useful tool when you’re choosing a car for a growing family. If you want to know more about the latest Peugeot 2008 models, visit us at Perth City Peugeot, and we will be happy to answer your questions.
