Best for: desirability
Land Rover’s big Defender ought to have been a candidate for the top of this chart; because, while it’s expensive, the car’s cleverly configurable interior presents the option of as many as eight passenger seats.
Buy a longer-wheelbase, five-door Land Rover Defender 110 and the firm will offer you a choice of five-, six- or seven passenger seats, while the elongated 130 seats eight in a 2/3/3 formation.
Sadly, for legislative reasons, you can’t order the latter with the jump seat in between the driver and front seat passenger, which would otherwise have made it a nine-seater (and, in the UK at least, in need of registration as a minibus).
Even without this as an official option, though, this car has impressive versatility. The seven-seat Defender has third-row chairs that are a little smaller than those of the related Discovery’s, but still perfectly usable by children, teenagers and smaller adults.
In the 130 you can have all eight on board and still have a very usable 400-litre boot, although the trade-off is the car’s vast 5358mm length that makes it something of a squash and a squeeze in most parking spaces.
This is also an expensive car, with even the very cheapest models starting from more than £70,000 – but, unlike the old Defender, it drives nearly as well as almost any luxury SUV of its size and type, has a broad range of modern electrified powertrains, and has off-road capability to spare.
