Blog > Becoming a dad makes you think about boot space
Author: Ash Sutcliffe
There has been a fair bit of chatter recently on the APR blog about pregnancies etc, so it’s time we talked about life after pregnancy, and the notable effect it has on the automobile.
First of all, I have a Nissan Qashqai, built (although some might say thrown together) by Dongfeng in Wuhan. It has the storage capacity of a motorbike (i.e. none at all), but now it has to take on the day to day role of being a ‘family car’. Originally it was just intended to be my own personal vehicle, but once my wife became pregnant she decided to stop driving her car, as she felt it was too dangerous. So the Qashqai became a taxi, then, following the birth of our baby, it has become more of a family machine.
It appears that push chairs, like cars, have become rather bloated over the past few years with their fancy folding mechanisms and plentiful cup holders for the baby and guardian alike, so the average push chair now weighs at least 100kg and requires a degree in astro-physics to open and operate, and not to mention a car boot the size of the Grand Canyon to accommodate it and the armada of baby things that come along the ride as well.
I came to China at a young age, so I largely missed out on the hot hatch craze that the majority of my friends went through in their late teens and early 20’s. Now I feel that I am missing out and need to get something relatively fast (obviously warranting a large and loud exhaust) but big enough to carry around baby things. The obvious solution to this would be to buy the recently launched made in China VW Golf GTI, but the lack of any reasonable boot space kills off any chance of that becoming a reality, I could wait for the Octavia VRS and see how that compares, but then how would I cope in winter with snow and ice? It would be game over very quickly. Obviously an AWD vehicle is required, but most SUV’s are slow, the faster SUV’s come in at premium pricing, both the Audi Q5 and the Merc GLK come in at a king’s ransom in the Middle Kingdom. So what’s it to be? 0-100kph in 12 seconds in an SUV, or 0-100kph in less than 8 seconds in a front wheel or rear wheel drive sedan that I would ultimately destroy in the first snows of winter?
12th Jul 10
Leave a Comment
Your comments will be moderated before being displayed above. Please note that we will not display your email address, but we might use it to email you back. Links may be included in your comments but HTML is not permitted. Fields marked * are required.