So of course we had to use the new car to do all of our errands this weekend. Me (5'10"), my wife (5'8"), my son (5'8"), and my daughter (5'7") all piled into the car and probably made 15 entry/exit maneuvers.

Notes:
1) It's trivial to get everyone in and out of the car when there is nothing on either side of the car, like in the driveway. The main issue is to make sure the front door people don't try and close their doors too soon. We got used to that pretty quickly.

2) It takes a little more orchestration when you are perpendicularly parked with cars on either side. You can't open the front doors to their maximum extension so the space between the front door and the back door doesn't really allow two people to stand there simultaneously. The front seat people both wanted to be polite and close their own doors and that just lead to trouble.

So, the best operation seemed to be for the front people to open their doors, and get out while the back seat people opened their doors. The front door people "walk away" (either toward the front or the back of the car as appropriate) and then the rear people exit the car and then are responsible for closing both doors. The key-fob comes in very handy for locking the doors. After figuring this out, we turned into a well-honed machine :-) No running into corners of doors, etc..

It's the same in reverse when getting into the car. It's easier for the back-seat people to open both doors, get in, and then the front seat people walk into the door opening and get in.

3) So, since it's a slightly delicate operation to do all of this, I'll probably be less inclined to say "I'll drive" when we go out to lunch at work. I don't really feel like explaining to everyone the various steps required to get in/out smoothly. It would be especially weird to ask the driver's side rear passenger to open the driver's side front door, then the rear door, and get in. I'd feel weird opening the driver's door of someone else's car.

Of course, I know my co-workers are anxious for a ride so I'll probably be educating them all anyway :-)

4) Kids were quite happy in the back seat. They even thought it would be fine for small (1-2 hour) road trips. Not much room for their typical bags of stuff to do but the trunk pass-through seemed to come in handy for that.

5) The cloth seats were great in the hot (98F) Texas sun, even though they are jet black. I'm sure the yellow paint helps too. A/C was acceptable, even to the rear passengers.

 

great post- thanks

What about front passengers opening the doors then letting back passengers out- then rfon pass get out and close both doors.

this is how it seemed to work on out brief test drive, but then again we were perpendicular parking-

getting my 8 this week hopefully