I have 4 kids so we had 3 car seats for a while. We're in the UK and we have a Vauxhall (Opel) Zafira which is a 7 seat minivan, very small by US standards, built on the chassis of the Astra small hatchback. I believe we have used this car to do everything we might do with an SUV, including taking our 6 person family on extended camping trips (with a small trailer) and across Europe as far as Lyon, Geneva and Luxembourg (with a roof box).

Sounds nice.

But living standards are higher in the US, and our trips are longer. To drive my family across Texas is nearly as far as driving across France and Germany, and I have three other states to cross.

If I can afford to pay more to get a bigger, faster, safer vehicle for the trip, it’s my money.

Us Americans use our vehicles to pick up a Hot Wheels jungle gym at Toys R Us, then we spend 3 hours on the freeway driving to another state to pick up some In N Out. We keep 8 large dogs in the back 4 rows, and have to hit Wal Mart to pick up a pallet of toilet paper to clean up. You can't understand our lifestyle requirements.

EDIT: Yesterday I had to run to the store to pick up a vat of queso. I'd like to see you Europeans do that in your Mr. Bean cars.

Living standards in the US are higher than the UK? What?

Yes?

I doubt there is any conventional metric for "standard of living" (which basically means per capita wealth/income) where the UK would be higher than the US, at almost any point on the income scale (even adjusted for the imputed value of the more extensive public health system in the UK).

That doesn't mean the UK is "worse" than the US, or that it has a lower quality of life, just that it has (and has had) a lower standard of living for decades. Few countries car match the standard of living of the US.

while agreeing to your point about living standards, i would add that there are almost no countries matching US military spending, foreign debt levels or energy consumption per capita

Well given the fact that Western Europe barely has a military outside of all the US troops there, it’s a lot easier to keep those debt levels low.

I suspect one factor here is that the US has, for practical purposes, no passenger intercity rail network, and has a somewhat less developed budget airline market.

That said, I find it notable that the average price of new cars in the US has typically been rising faster than income over the last decade or so. This would indicate, bluntly, effective advertising, rather than resources, being a big driver of the huge car thing. Average new car price in the US is creeping up on average annual income. This isn’t just an American problem, incidentally; it’s happening in a good few countries.

Longer term loans are also more common now. 5 years was typical but now 7 years is becoming even more common.

Safety features have added a lot to prices.

Not sure that’s right. Base prices don’t really seem to have risen; people are just buying higher end cars.

I'd reference https://carsgenius.com/are-new-high-tech-car-safety-features...

Now you're talking about three kids within a very short window of time, which is even less common.

But... my own youngest and oldest are almost exactly three years apart, so I can tell you that even a Toyota Camry was incapable of handling three American-standard carseats side-by-side.

However, in countries with lower speed limits, less bulky carseats are required to keep kids safe even in the unusual case of three closely-spaced kids.

Very short window? What is your car seat age range there? Current trend in the US is car seats till age 8 give or take. 3 kids within 8 years is very expected if you are having 3 or more.

Booster seats are often required for kids up to age 8 or so, often only if they are shorter than 4' 9". But booster seats easily fit in small cars.

The age limit recommendation are a rear-facing seat until 2, then a front-facing seat until they reach something like 65 pounds, then a booster seat.

From experience, three car seats cannot fit side-by-side in really any car, whether front-facing or rear-facing. But booster seats are fine, even in my tiny Fiat 500e. Back in the day, I leased a minivan for a while and then the kids started to outgrow bulky carseats.

The range in which all three are in car seats is still very small. Even with one child a year, the quickest "regular" speed, you would have a five year period with three child seats of the fifteen years that all three would be underage.

A Toyota Camry isn’t a small car.

That’s why they said “even a Camery”

It's a bit "squishy", to use my youngest's word, but you can easily put three car seats in one. Helps if at least one of them is only a booster though.

Very possible with the right seats. https://www.thecarcrashdetective.com/3-across-installations-...

A kia rio can so I don't see your issue.