Because we like our road trips and I like to take everything including the kitchen sink, boot space has always been a reasonably major car selection consideration for us. I kind of made a minimum of 400 litres as our bottom line. The SR has 395 Litres (close enough)
Anyway, in consideration of a longer trip later in the year, we did a trial this weekend with what we would need on a longer holiday. When we had bigger 500 litre boots in the past we used to include an esky (cooler) in our baggage but by substituting a supermarket cooler bag (as below) with freezer blocks, we managed to take a large suitcase, a medium suit case, a small suit case and a soft bag (+ the cooler bag) without folding the seats or removing the parcel shelf.
I should have taken a photo!
I found if I put the cooler bag in first with the medium case next to it (against the back of the seat) i could then put a bigger case behind it and still fit the small case on its end in the remaining space, with a soft bag on top of the cooler bag. I even managed to fit some groceries and some new shoes in the alcoves on either side later in our trip.! Snug, but impressive!
As mentioned elsewhere, we did about 800 kilometres of mixed driving and I didn't miss our previous larger luxury sedan at all.
Most of the small/medium SUV's we looked at wouldn't have fitted all that. I don't like driving around with the back seats folded down. It usually adds to the noise levels and things are more likely to move around and rattle. Plus stuff is exposed to prying eyes!
