FIRST CARS

Given cars in Denmark cost more than most people earn in a lifetime, Thomas has reached the ripe old age of thirty something without ever having owned a car. (This is possibly wise - look at what you buy if you can afford a car at 20!) Anyway, given the tank I drive with the 7 seats and 2.3l engine eats petrol and tyres like there's no tomorrow, we thought a sensible solution would be for Thomas to buy something with a small engine and tyres with only five seats that we could both use either on the school run when there are usually only four or five people in the car or also on the odd weekend when the big kids are at their dad's, economising further (and insuring my big blue tank will live longer in the process for trips where all of us need to go out together). Obviously given how many of us there are though, a five-seater small car would be much better than a four-seater small car... and here starts the rant. You go on all the well known Scottish car dealers' web pages and you can put in all sorts of parameters to help you find your new used car. It starts with basic stuff like car make, model, age, and price bracket. That then gets refined down into transmission type, mileage, age, engine size and finally if you want to specify further you can even give colour, number of doors, type of fuel, road tax pricing but none of the pages let you specify number of seats! I am fairly car nerdy but little cars aren't something I have had for 15 years (since the no-lapbelt-in-the-back law came in), so I didn't know for example that a Ford KA now only has four seats (it definitely had five when Derek owned one as a trainee lawyer 15 years ago), as does the Fiat panda (which also had five when I used to borrow mum's to drive to uni back when I was about 18). So I list the cars with small engines: you get Fiat Puntos, Seicentos, 500s, Daihatsu Cuores, Vauxhall Agilas and Corsas, Suzuki Altos, Renault Clios, Chevrolet Kaloses, Kia Picantos, Peugeot 206s, Nissan Micras, Ford Fiestas, Toyota Yarises, Citroen C2s and C3s, Skoda Fabias, Hyundai Getzes, VW Polos, Seat Ibizas etc etc. I want a button that lets me ignore any of the above without a 5th seat. I don't want to have to google every model to check. Why can't I specify the number of seats I'd like, especially given I can specify how many doors I want. Come on sort these frustrating car dealer pages before I give up and just stick with my tank, please!