Dad with wife, two kids, and a dog here. We are a one car family, and we intend to stay that way due to pretty real parking constraints.
We tried to hold out for as long as we could without an SUV. Ultimately, taking a week long trip with the family became focused around space management, having to play packing tetris and telling my wife "I don't think we have space for the pack and play". Sure we made it work, but it was stressful.
We got a 3 row SUV (3rd row collapses), and the additional space is just fantastic when it comes to packing. And when the cousins or grandparents are in town, the 3rd row comes in handy.
What about a minivan? All of my siblings with kids use them, and I genuinely think you can fit more cargo in them. My parents take the seats out, and use it to transport stuff from the hardware store, it can a bunch of kids, etc.
I recently rented a car for a camping trip, and they only had minivans - we had a ton of room to fit everything. Only real disadvantage is they look less "classy" than SUVs to some.
I don’t own either, but modern midsize SUVs and Minivans (for instance, a Honda Pilot and Odyssey) are essentially the same thing with different styling. I don’t get why folks think minivans are significantly better from an environmental, safety or utility point of view.
Lower clearance mainly, mean lower gravity center, generally more space (not always) and better front visibility (The A-pillar in newer minivans are a bit worse than SUVs, so point for them at least).
Lower clearance is really, really nice. 95% of deathly accidents involve a single car that went out of control, that's why road death increase with the %age of SUVs in a country despite better tech.
Wouldn’t a people carrier have been adequate? I don’t think people have an issue with the desire for interior space for families, it’s more an issue with the unnecessary extra size and weight brought on by the offroadesque styling
I'm not familiar with the term "people carrier", sorry. Is this like a minivan?
If so, many minivans are ~similar in size, weight, and capacity to modern SUVs (not all SUVs are a Chevy Suburban :-)). For example, you can compare the Honda Odyssey to the Mazda CX9 and the specs are actually not too different:
Mazda CX9: weight: 4,409lbs, 199″ L x 78″ W x 68″ H
A minivan allows much easier ingress, egress with large doors. Also, there are no SUVs with 8 seats that I know of. There are minivans with AWD or even limited 4WD. But they definitely carry social stigma and don't look sporty. That's important for a lot of people, I guess.
Also, wheel base and weight are not the best way to compare overall utility of a vehicle.
A lot of modern SUVs are actually pretty similar in specs to minivans:
Mazda CX9: weight: 4,409lbs, 199″ L x 78″ W x 68″ H
Honda Odyssey: 4,482lbs, 205″ L x 79″ W x 70″ H
For us, it mostly boiled down to us needing to periodically drive in snowy conditions. Obviously an SUV is not a magical vehicle for wintry conditions, but 4wd is big advantage.
We tried to hold out for as long as we could without an SUV. Ultimately, taking a week long trip with the family became focused around space management, having to play packing tetris and telling my wife "I don't think we have space for the pack and play". Sure we made it work, but it was stressful.
We got a 3 row SUV (3rd row collapses), and the additional space is just fantastic when it comes to packing. And when the cousins or grandparents are in town, the 3rd row comes in handy.