Edited by SLO76 on 01/05/2018 at 10:31

Firstly, you definately should put your foot down regarding seat heights, it will make a huge difference, especially with twins.

Between the two you mention, the citroen would hands down be the most family friendly. Not just because of its extra height, but also the huge glass area, lots of nooks and crannies to store all the junk you need for babies/young children. Reading between the lines, it seems hubby wants something with a bit of image, but you are looking solely at practicality?. So an SUV would probably fit the bill, but you may have to do some homework, go to garages etc, to find something with the space needed. You don't say how tall your hubby is?, also no mention of annual mileage, gearbox preference, type of journeys etc. But i'd be thinking Honda CR-V, Toyota RAV-4, Hyundai Santa Fe, Kia Sorento.

For a 12k (presumably secondhand) car you intend to keep for a few years, heavy depreciation is your friend rather than a problem. Assuing the kind of car you're looking at woud be about 24k new, if it loses half its value in the first two years, you can get a two year old car for 12k. A more 'premium' brand might take three or for years to lost half its value, so you'd only be able to get a 4 year old car instead. A quick search on Autotrader shows that there's 16 reg Grand Piccassos available for your budget with normal mileage, but only 14 reg Passats unless you want something that's done over 50000 miles already. In three years time, the Citroen will only be 5 years old, but the VW will already be 7 years old.

We've got two small children (aged 3 and an eight month old baby), and both by wife and I find our conventional car much easier to deal with loading/unloading than when going in friend's SUVs.

With the detachable baby seats, a conventional car is the same height as the buggy base, so it's a transfer across with the carry handle at a convenient height rather than a lift up. I can normally fit it into the car one-handed without even putting my head into the car until it's clicked onto the base. Our three year-old has been able to climb into his own seat in our Octavia for about 18 months now, whereas he still finds it fairly tricky to get into the same seat in my sister-in-law's Quasqai, and usually covers half the inside of the car in mud doing so!

Also, remember that the buggy itself is often heavier than the baby, and you'll need to lift this into the boot regularly as well. A flat, low boot lip as you get on estate car is much easier than hoisting it up into an SUV.

It may depend on how tall you are though (both my wife and I are relatively short), so if you can I'd recommend getting a baby seat and buggy, and taking it to a few car showrooms. You wouldn't need to borrow a baby - just put a few bottles drink in the seat to load it up near to its weight limit.

If you do decide on a large estate car, the ones to look at would be Hyundai i40, Skoda Superb and possibly a Ford Mondeo as they all have larger than average distance between front and back seats. Of these, the Hyundai will get you the newest car for the money I'd guess.

For MPVs, it may also be worth looking at a Zafira and S-Max as well as the Citroen. The best SUV/Crossover I've driven was the Mazda CX-5, which would be worth a look as well I think.

I agree with the Volvo V70 as a good bet, the rear seats split into 2, 1, or both down and swallows baby gear. V70's are capable of high mileages and the diesels have good mpg. £12k should get a good car.