Best Car for Carrying Gear?

[yorks5stringer]

I can get a Bass and a MB combo in this so would thoroughly recommend it......

 

[Boodang]

34 minutes ago, yorks5stringer said:

How do you get on with the 'old bill' with that registration plate?

Well, it's a personalised plate as my name is Mr Turbo!

[Rich]

2 hours ago, Newfoundfreedom said:

With the current state of play in Ukraine and the fast rising fuel prices. I'd be looking at one of these...

 

 

 

1 hour ago, yorks5stringer said:

I see that's the 1 horse power version, you can upgrade to double the power.....

 

In glorious workers' paradise of North Korea, that is sportscar. 

 

[yorks5stringer]

50 minutes ago, Boodang said:

Well, it's a personalised plate as my name is Mr Turbo!

Sounds fishy to me...

[Boodang]

4 minutes ago, yorks5stringer said:

Sounds fishy to me...

Well, in fairness, there is a lot of 'Hot Tuna' involved. 

[casapete]

After more than 35 years running Astra estates , I’ve recently changed to a diesel Skoda Octavia estate. Great car, drives very well and pulls like a train in all gears with the boot area loaded, and does nigh on 60mpg whatever I drive like. Load area is good, although for the size of the car probably little more than the (smaller) Astras. I know Vauxhalls are often not liked by some, but I always found them very reliable and easy / fairly cheap to maintain. Hope the Skoda proves as good.

[Silky999]

Ex-NHS Renault Trafic minibus with Unwin rails and a vinyl floor. Came with 7 individual removable seats but usually only have 3 in the back plus the three up front which caters for the 3 kids and 5 dogs. With all the seats removed, it’s a normal Trafic SWB van. Takes the band PA, some lights, my gear plus the drummer’s kit. It was the wife’s main car until I started to work from home, she loves it and says it’s no more difficult to drive than a big car but kid and dog proof. 

[Dan Dare]

Any decent MPV or estate.

[ambient]

Someone else’s.

[Boodang]

I was going to say this was the worst car for gigs but in retrospect it did remarkably well. Three piece, piano, bass, drums, plus PA.... it was a bit like a game of tetris to get it loaded but it did it without complaining. I wouldn't recommend it tho!

[thodrik]

Old 2008 Volvo V50 for me. I’ve had it eight and a half years. I’ve put a lot of miles on it but it is still going. At this point I will just run it until it stops working as the trade in value is virtually nil.

[Skybone]

Used to have a Leon ST, great car for lugging stuff about. Have the Leon Hatchback now. I think it's pretty good for carrying stuff, decent sized boot & the back seat is wide enough for the bass case.

[jimmyb625]

Skoda Rapid saloon for me, which is slightly smaller than the Octavia, but still with a fairly large boot.

 

I'm hankering after an Octavia Vrs estate for my next one, as I'm having a mid-life crisis, but am still just about sensible enough to consider load-carrying capacity!

[redbandit599]

Skoda Superb Estate here. Quite regularly get PA, sub, lights, all the cables and stands, two 112 Bergs, Ashdown ABM, two 112 guitar cabs, two guitars, two basses, two pedal boards, several bags of stuff, plus me and our guitarist. Mahoosive.

[BreadBin]

My old X-trail (09 plate) is massive inside. The extra height over a normal estate car allows for vertical orientation of items that would normally have to lie down if carrying really big loads.

It was adequate to transport 3 of us with room for another - 2 electric guitars, one bass, one acoustic (all cased), guitar amp and cab, bass combo, guitar stands, pedal board and kit bags all in the boot. I could even still see out of the rear view mirror.

[Bassfinger]

XC90. Huge boot, seats fold aaway for a flat floor, including the front passenger seat. Split tailgate makes sliding gear in and out a doddle. The R Design has privacy glass so Johnny Lightfingers can't see your gear. Best of all youll look like a safe and sensible sort who won't start fights or play any Gary Glitter songs.

[martthebass]

I get all my gear in one of these.......with a bit of a squeeze....

[Leonard Smalls]

20 hours ago, yorks5stringer said:

I can get a Bass and a MB combo in this

I managed to get 2 basses, a guitar, guitar fx and very large bass fx boards, plus guitar and bass heads, 2 stands and a guitarist in mine.

And my Mrs reckons there's not enough room in it!

Edited March 4, 2022 by Leonard Smalls

[deepbass5]

First car i got specifically for band gear was the old jelly mould siera estate, wife was the singer so two people Bass rig was two Trace 15's etc and PA , monitors and lights. But with three babies at home and a few near miss's on way to gigs we invested in a VW transporter as we would never have survived a smash. worth thinking about when loading up your daily commute. When serious gigging dropped off we sold the transporter and got a Skoda Yeti. and was amazed we could still get all the same gear in there.  rear seats tip up but can also be completely removed so you can use footwells too

 

[deepbass5]

Thats far too close to my personal plate to be funny 😄  but it makes me drive very considerately 

 

 

 

[Bassfinger]

3 hours ago, Leonard Smalls said:

I managed to get 2 basses, a guitar, guitar fx and very large bass fx boards, plus guitar and bass heads, 2 stands and a guitarist in mine.

And my Mrs reckons there's not enough room in it!

 

More to the point, even if my gear were to fit I couldn't fit myself in that! 🤣

[yorks5stringer]

5 hours ago, Leonard Smalls said:

I managed to get 2 basses, a guitar, guitar fx and very large bass fx boards, plus guitar and bass heads, 2 stands and a guitarist in mine.

And my Mrs reckons there's not enough room in it!

Good to see you have your letters and numbers spaced out legally, so many people 'try it on' and make an obscene word....

Edited March 4, 2022 by yorks5stringer

[Jakester]

On 03/03/2022 at 12:11, yorks5stringer said:

I see that's the 1 horse power version, you can upgrade to double the power.....

Apparently 1 horse = about 15hp. No idea why - perhaps whoever came up with hp as a unit of measurement had only seen Shetland ponies! 

[Jakester]

Oh, and to answer the question in the OP - Skoda Superb Estate. Such a large load area I reckon you could play tennis in there. Absolutely cavernous. 

 

With my old Octavia MK1 estate I could get all the band gear in - drums, PA, amps, lights etc. 

 

My current car is a Subaru Forester and I managed drums and PA last time but there was literally no room for anything else!

[Osiris]

On 03/03/2022 at 11:28, Rich said:

I have a Skoda Octavia hatch. In the boot I can get my BF Super 12, 4U rack case, folding sack-trolley, rucksack containing FX and leads and so on, Hercules bass stand, music stand if required, bag containing stage gear, and gig bag containing Sire 5-string and associated stuff... all with the back seats up and the parcel shelf in place. That boot is like the Tardis. I would recommend an Octavia without hesitation.

 

 

Whatever you do DON'T bother with the Octavia estate, at least not the model introduced in 2020. The drummer in my last band had the previous Octavia estate model and it had a huge boot with an easy flat load in. When the contract was up on my Ford Focus estate - which has already been recommended and rightly so, it's big and has an easy flat load in - around 18 months ago Ford wanted another £150 a month for the equivalent model. I kid you not. After telling them to swivel I ended up with an Octavia estate, partly based on the old drummers car and partly because I know nothing about cars, but people I know who are interested said you can't go wrong with a Skoda. But while the marketing team make a big fuss about the Octavia estates boot space being huge, they fail to point out that in the new model that it's all but unusable. There's a big deep boot lip to catch your cab on when loading it in and out, the rear seats don't fold flat, just the top half pushed down on top of the bit you sit on. I could get my old 2x12 cab in there but anything else was balanced haphazardly on the 70's style fold-down seats that are more bent over at 45 degrees than flat. When I called Skoda to have a whinge about it they offered to sell me an artificial floor to make life easier, can't remember exactly how much they wanted but it was hundreds of pounds. I don't think so. 

 

So yeah, don't bother if you want one for shunting your gear around. Especially when you factor in the software that could only have been programmed by a lobotomised porpoise, it controls everything in the car but its only response to anything and everything you do is to constantly beep and squawk at you while throwing up tiny illegible warning messages on the dashboard. And the wonderful nanny steering control which constantly tries to throw you into a ditch or into any oncoming traffic. 🤬 There's a crisp £10 note waiting for the first Basschatter to steal it and burn it out. Just PM me.