E70 purchasing advice please!

[bobadoodle]

[quote=""535dboy""]The E70 isn't much of a looker but those R classes are real hounds!!![/quote]
I disagree I think the E70 is a lovely looking car by far the nicest looking 4x4. The R class is indeed a dog but like the 5 series GT there is something that appeals.

[stevee]

The clincher for me (and unique to the E70) is the flat rear footwell. Any competitor has a thumping great transmission tunnel down the middle making the middle seat useless.
Get 7 seats and you can then move the middle seats forwards/backwards giving a massive amount of rear legroom.

[IvanG]

I agree, the flat rear footwell is great

[535dboy]

I agree you can drag a dead body out by its feet without it getting stuck on the hump!

[Ibby]

Many thanks for replies. I did look at the R class however the running costs for it are the same as the GL (it gobbles fuel has £460 road tax a year and also very expensive service costs that merc tend to command). I agree with 535dboy the R class looks a dog too and I don't like the look of these hybrid 4x4/people carriers!

Unfortunately due to the bad weather our search has been postponed till the spring but we have seen a couple that we like the look of - I would guess in the current economic climate the dealers would be willing to budge a little regarding price or what we may get for our e class? (been about 4 years since we bought a car so you can get a bit rusty about these things!)

[Ibby]

Oh yes one question I forgot to ask is can the rear seats on the 3rd row be used for child seats (for children of 18 months plus?) or booster seats? Thanks

[MJim]

You can use the rear two seats for the booster plus back child seat (stage 2) but there's no isofix obviously. I think you'd struggle with the forward facing stage 1 car seat as the seat's quite short on top of which there's not very much leg room. So the child's legs need to be long enough to dangle rather than be projected into the seat in front if you know what I mean.

I read one formal X5 road test comment on there being no curtain air bags at the very back, but on the plus side the two seats are a good distance from the side of the car, plus the car should be very strong back there given there are no 3rd row doors.

As you probably know, there's not much boot space when the rear two seats are up, but for us they're perfect as we only use them for shorter trips with extra passengers, and we don't want an enormous car to accommodate 7 plus masses of luggage.