Venga or IX20 remove the spare wheel cover and there is a huge extra amount of space, rear seat back tilts forward too.

For a properly small car, the Fiat Panda has a surprisingly large boot as we found when hiring one on holiday. These things are relative obviously, and it won't hold as much as a Mondeo, but it does much better than many similar cars.

Going up in size to the Astra/Focus sized hatchbacks they are all much the same size so access is the only real difference. After is predecessor having the worst loading aperture ever, the current model Leon is about as good as it gets, without stepping up to a long hatchback such as an Octavia, Insignia etc.

In terms of boot size for money spent, I'd go for one of the van derived cars, whichever one was on the best offer at the time - none will be great to drive but will do the job.

Most space in a small car = boxy! The more box like the car is, the more space inside there will be. So cars with upright rear hatches have more useable space that slanting hatches.

When we only had two young children and went on holiday we would rent small estate cars. Best we had was a Polo estate. Very useful. When daughter arrived, we needed more space. The best solution was a Kangoo, Doblo or similar.

I think Fiat and Citroen still sell a small car based van with seats, windows and luggage space. Probably not great cars, but if needs must....

The family is now older and son #1 drives a 2004 Punto. We had to go away for the weekend and he wanted to drive - we needed two cars anyway - instead of getting everything into my E-class (which may not have been big enough anyway for what we were taking) we took the Punto and the Evoque. Punto surprisingly spacious and took almost as much stuff as the Evoque and much easier to load.

A couple of years ago my dad had to pick up some family members from Manchester Airport - there were three of them all with luggage for 2 weeks away.

All three suitcases and small bags fitted in the boot of his Jazz - even he was amazed.

From his house they were being picked up by another relative who turned up in a Juke - the boot took the two smallest cases. The rest had to fit between the passengers.