7 Brilliant Seven-Seaters That Don't Compromise Speed Or Space

There’s always a sense of pride in being able to combine pace and practicality in a car, but a large family usually stops all ideas of right-foot playtime by taking five-seat estates out of the equation. It’s not always the end of the road, though, if you’re willing to shell out for the privilege.

Lately we’ve been enjoying some time with the plush seven-seat Land Rover Discovery 5, and while you’ll be able to order that with a supercharged V6, if you like, we wondered what else was out there that will shift up to seven people from A to B pronto. If you’ve got the need for speed but an even greater need for space, one of these might be the solution.

Range Rover Sport

With the supercharged 5.0-litre V8 engine plumbed in, the 503bhp Range Rover Sport is a very fine way to terrify your family (the hotter SVR is available only as a five-seater, I’m afraid). In this guise the Sport will do things around corners that no SUV should ever really contemplate, and it’s pretty much as practical as you could need it to be. It will tow 3.5 tons over more or less any terrain, for a start, so it’s probably fine with taking the kids to football practice.

Volvo XC90

A less brutish and calmer, more forward-looking way to move your family is the range-topping XC90 T8, which is a ‘twin-engined’ hybrid. A puny-sounding 2.0-litre engine is turbocharged and supercharged for more power, and then linked to an electric motor mounted on the rear axle. The end result is both near-silent, in electric mode, to quite brisk (0-62mph in 5.6sec), with a maximum 401bhp and 472lb ft on tap. It’s also unbelievably refined.

Audi SQ7

The SQ7 will bimble around at town speeds all day long, quietly and comfortably, like any other Q7. But shove the throttle into the carpet and your unsuspecting passengers will be hit with 429bhp and 664lb ft of torque, catapulting the SQ7 towards the horizon.

It may be a diesel, but at least it’s a V8. Like a lot of big, powerful SUVs, it can tow the UK legal maximum of 3.5 tons and, with an 85-litre fuel tank, it doesn’t need to stop too often for fuel.

BMW X5 M

Similarly Germanic but very much petrol-powered this time, the twin-turbo X5 M is a bit of a hooligan. Pushing 567bhp out through a 4.4-litre V8, the X5 M is, we think, the most powerful seven-seat SUV that you can buy in Britain. There’s lots of luxury, as you’d expect for something so expensive, and like all these cars there’s no overcoming the weight of the thing, but it’s still amazingly capable both away from the lights and through corners.

Mercedes-Benz GL

The GL 63 wasn’t sold in this country for very long in this guise, being canned when the new naming structure hit with a vengeance in 2015. It was a bit of a beast, though, with 550bhp and 560lb ft from the 5.5-litre twin-turbo V8. It’s probably the best-sounding in this list, and you will absolutely never get tired of cold-starting it. In fact you’ll probably start parking in enclosed spaces just to amplify the effect when you get back in.

Chevrolet Tahoe RST

If you’re Stateside and you’re after a seven-seat rocket ship, the mighty new Dodge Durango SRT is out of the equation because it only has six chairs. The only really rapid seven-seater is the Tahoe RST, which uses a normally-aspirated 6.2-litre V8 to stuff 414bhp down through its four wheels. It has a 10-speed automatic gearbox, 22-inch wheels and a special exhaust with 28 per cent better air flow than lesser Tahoes. It’ll hit 60mph in less than six seconds.

Tesla Model S

And now for something completely different. Specify the third seat row option in a Model S and you can just about put two kids in there, facing backwards as if they’re in the back of an old Volvo estate. As a responsible parent, you can then play games by seeing whether you can accelerate hard enough to whack the little nippers’ heads on the rear windscreen. Actually, don’t do that, but it’s a funny mental image anyway…