[onewhippedpuppy]

Originally Posted by jmshepard

So what has changed since I was a kid? My parents raised a family (3 kids) with nothing larger than a Pontiac sedan. The median size of an American family is getting smaller. Why is the minumum size for a family car now something on the order of a Suburban?
Jim S.

That's easy: car seats. Without having a very wide back seat, you can only fit two car seats in one row. With modern airbags, you're not allowed to put them in front. When we had our 4Runner, with our baby seat and child seat, you couldn't fit a human in-between. So with my wife and I and our two kids, we were full. With our SRX, we now have a 3rd row seat to haul my wife's siblings that like to visit us. Of course, that eliminates 90% of the cargo space, which causes new problems.