wow thanks for all of the input. the reason we are looking at something slightly larger than a regular car is because my husband and I are really tall and appreciate a little extra room (also my kids are still in carseats which take up even more room).

I'm sure we will be using public transport as well. We are not living right in the middle of the city though (we'll be in vesenaz), and I need to something to get to the grocery and also to school in addition to weekend trips.

we are going this weekend to look at cars and hopefully have something by the time we arrive.

If you're both tall, I'm 6'3ish and I found the Qashqai and CRV to be a little tight on headroom, RAV4 and Santa Fe are fine.

Cannot go wrong with a Audi or BMW SUV, proven Quality.
An old saying...Stay away from 'Jap Crap`

Honda CRV's are extremely reliable and well built. They are a fraction the cost of the beamers and audi stuff. If your after performance then they are a poor choice but if you want to ferry kids around reliably then the CRV is a good bet.

I am 6'1 and I fit but as paddy says much bigger than that and I think you would find the drivers cabin a little cramped.

Funny that, the Toyota we just sold ran totally problem free for 6 years. And out of the 5 most reliable cars in Europe, 4 are Japanese, whereas 3 of the 5 least reliable are Mercs.

Source

The T72 could be kitted out quite nicely for the school run.

It's available for a very reasonable 83k $

http://www.mortarinvestments.eu/products/tanks-2/t--42

Yes but what kind of car is it? Make, model, year etc ?

What about Nissan X-trail?

de1ta - if you want to embed a youtube video just put the video ID in the youtube tags, not the whole address. Or put in the whole address without the youtube tags. Check this post.

It's not an "old saying" for nothing. In all reliability surveys for the last 2 decades, Japanese cars are found to be the most reliable, while European luxury brands are consistently called out for the unreliable money dumps they are.