Originally Posted By: addyguy
The problem? We were a family of 6 at the time, and this was to be the family vehicle! Right away I pointed out this wasn't really going to work, but both my parents countered with the fact that we rarely all went out as a family, and for times we did, we would just make do. On a lot of trips, this involved my younger sisters sitting on our laps. After a while, I got fed up and went out with them less.
My family was in basically the same situation. It was still always a tight squeeze whenever we went somewhere as a family. We used to always fight over who had to sit on "the hump" in the backseat. It was a little easier back then, since most cars had bench seats in the front -- I think we could actually fit 7 people in our old Cutlass. For even more capacity, we used to also sit on the floor in the back of our Dodge Aspen station wagon.
One of the things I find remarkable when looking back at that era and before is, even though families have been shrinking in size, it seems like cars and houses are getting bigger and bigger every year.
For my family, we just have economy cars and if we have more than five people, we just take two cars. For long trips, with just my family, we use either a roof rack or hitch haul, and if there's no room in the back, somebody has to sit with a dog on his her lap.
