Question of the week: Why can't a find a car with good passenger access?
Fri, 31 Oct 2025
Dear Honest John,
"Which vehicles would offer my wife easy access to the front seats? We are both 70 years old and she has had some hip issues.
I recently replaced my Ford C-MAX with a new Ford Kuga (being the nearest Ford offered to an MPV). We have found however that the door sill and height of the Kuga make it hard for my wife to get in and out of the front seats. She is 5ft tall and I am 6ft2.
I have been and looked at many vehicles but they all seem to have the high sills which require lifting your leg up and over to enter and exit. We like the sitting upright of SUV's but not this access issue."
- GL
Dear GL,
Unfortunately, this is a fairly typical arrangement, not just in SUVs but in modern cars in general. In the quest for greater bodyshell stiffness and subsequent crash safety, modern vehicle design results in substantial sills and side pillars, particularly important in side impacts. The downside is that wider, more substantial sills are more difficult to negotiate for some.
There are some exceptions. The Royal Institute for Disabled Consumers (RIDC) is a great resource for working out how difficult ingress and egress might be in a car you're looking at. We've had a look at a few Kuga alternatives and many give a similar measurement for 'door sill height to floor of car' of around 125mm, but a Nissan Qashqai is a good chunk less at 95mm, so it could be worth a look.
The height of the sill itself from the ground is similar, though. A Skoda Karoq is one of the lower ones, which could make access easier, but then you have that same door sill height to floor measurement of about 125mm.
While time-consuming, your best bet is simply to try getting in and out of an example of each at a dealer, and perhaps trying a few others, using the RIDC data as a guide to steer you in the right direction.
