Volkswagen Atlas Cross Sport or Subaru Outback: Which Is Best for Family

• We bought our Subaru Outback in 2018 after having our first child.
• When I found out I was pregnant with twins, I panicked, thinking about needing a bigger car.
• We made it work, but now that our kids are older, we are trying to figure out which car we need.

In 2019, while living in New York City, I found out I was pregnant with twins. My first concern was how much money we would need to spend on new things — including a bigger car.

We bought a used 2017 Subaru Outback for $27,000 when our first child was just months old. We figured that having a baby and two dogs required us to have a durable car but also not super fancy since there would be plenty of baby and dog accidents of all kinds in the future.

But now, staring at an ultrasound marked with Baby A and Baby B, I worried that our Outback could not handle three car seats in one row.

After testing a 2024 Volkswagen Atlas Cross Sport, I’ve realized the heralded third row may not be an absolute necessity for my family, and that it’s possible to get more room than in our aging Outback for way less than the cost of a full-size SUV.

We made the Outback work for a few years

We decided to move to Maine, knowing that having three young kids in a tiny apartment in Brooklyn would be tough. With the cost of moving, we didn’t have money to spend on a new car, so we invested in slim car seats instead.

The Subaru Outback was exactly what we needed for the first few years with three kids. The slim car seats fit in one row, and the trunk was perfect for a double stroller, beach bags, or even tiny skis.

It became “the family” car, where kids can eat snacks and make a mess of them. It’s also the car we take when we go on road trips because it doesn’t stand out and fits almost in any parking spot.

We want an upgrade to a bigger SUV

But now that the kids are almost 7, 5, and 5, we want an upgrade. This is mostly because sitting next to each other has triggered many fights between my kids. My husband is convinced a third row would solve this problem since our oldest could have the whole row for himself.

I worry that he’ll complain about being far away from everyone and unable to reach snacks and toys. Also, when we’ve ridden in other three-row midsize SUVs, it was an absolute slog to get kids in and out of the far back, and the trunk space leaves a lot to desire.

In our process of deciding what car we need, we decided to try the 2024 Volkswagen Atlas Cross Sport. We have lots of friends who have the Atlas with three rows and they talk wonders about the car.

We decided to test the Cross Sport because, while it only has two rows, it’s bigger than the Outback, which made me wonder if that would be enough for our kids.

I was very impressed at first with the two-row Atlas

Immediately after getting into the Volkswagen Atlas Cross Sport, I felt like I was in a luxury car compared to our Outback. Obviously, a 2024 car, compared to a 2017 one, is going to have more gadgets, but I was incredibly impressed at first.

Small things like how easy it was to connect my phone to the console to have my maps or my music ready to go, having cameras both in the front and back of the car to guide you while parking, and the speedometer reflected on the windshield to keep me under the speed limit.

I also liked the automatic LED headlights, especially for driving at night on Maine’s very dark and quiet winding roads. They automatically turned to high beams in low light and turned off when there was incoming traffic. I also liked how long and wide the sunroof was, a feature my kids also noticed immediately from the back seat.

I realized we don’t really need a third row

Another thing I noticed when we took the Atlas Cross Sport for a long drive was how much more comfortable I was in the passenger seat compared to the Outback. My footwell is often packed with water bottles, snacks, tissues, and whatever else kids might need.

In the Atlas, despite having all that, I didn’t feel overwhelmed by all the stuff the way I do in our Outback.

Even more impressive was that our kids’ car seats all fit in the second row as expected, but they also had more space to walk past each other when getting in and out of the car. This made for fewer fights and more pleasant driving for my husband and me.

So, while we started looking into new cars, thinking we needed a third row, the Volkswagen Atlas Cross Sport proved that we didn’t necessarily need that, but rather a slightly bigger car.

We also wanted a car that was not incredibly expensive. The starting selling price for a 2025 Volkswagen Atlas Cross Sport is $37,190, which sounds much better than the parent-popular choices like a Suburban, starting at $63,495, a Ford Expedition, starting at $61,700, or a Chevrolet Tahoe, which starts at $60,495 and can go up to $80,195.