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3 kids, no 3rd row vehicle

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JTBurns

JTBurns

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So, if you want the JT and want someone to justify it to you, in Europe (and really, almost anywhere in the world) they'd laugh at the Gladiator not being fit for 3 children. Rest of the world would consider the Ford Focus or something similar the perfect family car for that affair.

Once you add a bed cover or a rack, forget it, the storage is just as good as a mini-van, if not better in most ways.

As a fellow father whose eldest is now 13 I can say that really the only time you "miss" a 3rd row for real is when you need to cart around your kids + their friends.

No one has bad things to say about cars like the Odyssey, hard to look at hat purchase and say "you purchased wrong." But the JT totally fits your lifestyle.

/devilsadvocate off
Yep totally agree "needing" a 3rd row is a very American thing. And I have the JT already, it was kind of more of a question of when we trade my wife's car, should it have a 3rd row. There are just many more appealing options that aren't and she doesn't want anything too big.

The three kids have fit well in the JT so far through 7 months and we even made a roundtrip from PA to FL and back unscathed!

I do appreciate the experience of you and others especially as the kids get older, and I'm concluding that 3rd rows are more convenient but not totally necessary which is great to know, and hopefully helpful to others with this arrangement.

Now we just need to find another vehicle I actually want to drive on the weekend, because otherwise I'm just gonna put all those miles on the Jeep
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RacerX00

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Yep totally agree "needing" a 3rd row is a very American thing. And I have the JT already, it was kind of more of a question of when we trade my wife's car, should it have a 3rd row. There are just many more appealing options that aren't and she doesn't want anything too big.

The three kids have fit well in the JT so far through 7 months and we even made a roundtrip from PA to FL and back unscathed!

I do appreciate the experience of you and others especially as the kids get older, and I'm concluding that 3rd rows are more convenient but not totally necessary which is great to know, and hopefully helpful to others with this arrangement.

Now we just need to find another vehicle I actually want to drive on the weekend, because otherwise I'm just gonna put all those miles on the Jeep

lol, literally in that same boat right now. Purchasing a JT + another vehicle for the wife, just how the moons happened to align. It's like herding cats especially with the car market being what it is.

We're not even considering 3rd row options right now, hasn't even come up in conversation. However, I just asked my wife why and she didn't even answer she just said, "If you have 3 kids you need a 3rd row" and had nothing else to offer. So there's that.

I don't know, maybe I'm the wrong person to ask, I will resist a 3rd row with all my might unless I'm sporting multiple vehicles.... but who wants an $40,000 Odyssey sitting in there driveway getting 1,000 miles of use per year? 3rd row, not for me.
 

dfwxjer

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We made do with a normal vehicle as long as we could but once the oldest of 3 reached puberty the 3 row SUV become an awesome asset. Growing up my parents had a ZJ as the family car, and with 3 kids it was always a tight fit. Back then the only option for 3 practical rows was a suburban and most parents didn't put much thought in to their kids being comfy lol. They'd just yell at us to stfu if we got rowdy.

We started with a Lexus GX, but the 3rd row is laughably small so I traded it in on a Navigator L. Captains chairs in the middle and a giant 3rd row that still has a ton of cargo room with the 3rd row seats up. I've absolutely loved it the last few years and can't see life without a full size SUV for the foreseeable future.

All 3 kids fit in the JT for around town, but for longer trips the Navi is amazing. It took some getting used to at first, but honestly not bad at all. Plus it tows my Impala when needed, and I can haul the kids and their friends around with no problems.
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