Would prefer a bit of SUV styling over a van (no logic, just matters of heart/mind).
That is fair enough, but you should probably be aware of the reason a car like the Rifter and its kissing cousins might be a better fit for you, given you specifically mention shoulder room. A van based MPV generally will have vertical slab sides, so there will be very little, if any, narrowing of interior width between the level of the seat bases and the top of the seat backs. SUV's, as with most cars, tend to have much more heavily sculpted sides, generally flaring out by quite a lot from the base of the windows. So while the width at the level of the seat bases may be fine, once you get up to the window level and above, there is noticeably less width for shoulders.
So to find an SUV with equivalent shoulder width to the Rifter, you probably have to go up to something the size/segment of the Touareg.
The other problems are that you can't really gauge how much interior width (certainly at shoulder height) there is by the exterior dimensions because of the aforementioned sculpted flanks, but also because you don't know how thick the doors are. And while the brochure for a specific car may tell you the width across the rear seat, its very unlikely to give you the width at shoulder height.
A couple of things you can try though, first is searching for cars with three isofix points on the rear seats. I realise you don't actually need them, but it stands to reason that a car so equipped is going to have either three equal sized rear seats, or that the centre section of the bench is flat rather than "humped". The other thing you can try is simple searching for cars with a wide rear seat. Either way, you are ultimately going to have to look at any car you like the look of to find out if its accommodation will suffice.
Edited by badbusdriver on 28/10/2023 at 13:20
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