Best for you and your wife to try each of them out on a long test drive and see which you prefer to live with. The Skoda Superb estate has the same engine range as the Passat and has even more room in the back: if I were you I'd add it to the shortlist.

If you need 7 seats then it's the S-Max every time.

You do get the flexibility of extra seating in the S-Max (of course, using 6 or 7 seats eats into boot space) but as said above, take a careful look at one before deciding.

I was considering one precisely because of the flexible seating, but personally didn't like the interior or the rear seats.

I went for a Mondeo IV estate instead (same floorpan and powertrain). The Mondeo is VAST inside with a boot that swallows anything, has excellent ride and noise suppression on standard 55-profile tyres, goes pretty well and is reasonably economical in 2.0 TDCI form. I averaged 42.5mpg in 3.5 years and nearly 40K miles from new - not bad for a 1.6 tonne barge that was driven, er, positively. I had no problems at all apart from a blown brake light bulb.

People have criticised the Mondeo for being 'too big', but really it's no bigger than a Passat / 5-series estate. I also looked at the new Passat estate, and to me it was very similar to the Mondeo: I found very little to choose between them.

Have you considered a V70 with the D3 5-cylinder diesel? I'm now running a V60 D3, and it's brilliant, in my opinion. The engine puts it in a completely different class to the 4-cylinder diesel herd -- it's SO punchy and has given me nearly 46 genuine mpg over the past 10K miles.

The V60 is criticised for having a small boot, but it's misleading: on a recent family holiday (2 adults, 3 kids), all the stuff that used to fill the Mondeo's boot went easily into the V60 without leaving anything out or having to put it in footwells.