Boot Space Compared: Every Segment, Seats Up and Down

Boot space is the spec buyers check last and argue about first, and it is the spec where brochure numbers are least comparable: two cars quoting the same litres can be measured to different fill lines by different methods. This page lists the boot volume we hold for every hatch, sedan, liftback, wagon, coupe, convertible, SUV and people mover on Australian sale, grouped by segment, seats up and seats down, read live from our database each time the page rebuilds. Two body styles are deliberately absent, and both have a number of their own rather than a boot: utes, whose trays are measured in millimetres and get their own tray dimensions comparison, and commercial vans, which publish a load bay measured to the roof with nothing behind the front seats. Everything else with a boot is below.

Read this before you read the tables

A boot litre is not a fixed unit. Most Australian brochures use the VDA method, where one-litre blocks are stacked to the top of the rear seat backs. Some use SAE, which fills to a different line. Some publish a load-to-the-roof figure, which is much larger for the same physical boot. Of the 383 nameplates below, only 49 record which standard their figure uses, drawn from 161 car rows whose source document names it. The rest do not say, and no honest ranking can be built across an unstated basis. The tables are sorted by size so you can find a car, not so you can crown a winner. A 20-litre gap between two cars that do not name their method is noise. A 200-litre gap is real.

The seats-down column has a second problem on top of that. Folded volume depends on where the manufacturer stops measuring and on whether the seats fold flat, so two cars with the same folded litres can swallow very different loads. It is also the number nobody publishes: 84 of 383 nameplates here have one, about 22 per cent. Where it is missing the cell says No data, never an estimate, and the car keeps its place in the table.

The segments

Size bands are vehicle length, printed under each heading. 376 of 383 nameplates publish a seats-up figure. EVs are tagged, and a front boot is noted separately rather than folded into the total. A band needs a length: where we hold none for a variant it borrows its siblings', and the few cars with no length at all get a table of their own at the end rather than disappearing.

What the numbers actually tell you

Three patterns survive the measurement noise. The first is that segment beats badge: the Skoda Scala hatch (467 L) carries more than plenty of small SUVs, and the wagon beats the body it is based on, by 40 L over the Skoda Octavia sedan and 45 L over the Superb liftback. The second is that a seven-seat SUV quotes a number most owners never see, because the brochure figure is usually taken with the third row folded. With all three rows up, 6 large seven-seaters here drop below 150 L, which is a school bag and a shopping bag. The third is that folding the seats roughly triples the space in a typical five-seat car (across the 84 nameplates publishing both figures the median is 3.1 times), but the multiple runs from 1.2 times to 11.5 times, so it is not a rule you can apply to a car whose folded figure is missing.

The practical test is not litres at all. It is whether the boot floor is long enough, wide enough between the arches and tall enough under the parcel shelf for the thing you actually carry, which is why a 400-litre boot can fail on a pram that a 380-litre boot swallows. Use litres to build a shortlist, then check the shape.

Compare two cars properly

Once two or three cars are on your shortlist, put them side by side, where boot volume sits next to rear legroom, kerb weight, price and running costs.

• Mazda CX-5 vs Toyota RAV4, the mid-size pair where one publishes a boot figure and one does not
• Hyundai Staria vs Kia Carnival, 831 L against 627 L behind the rearmost row
• Honda Accord vs Skoda Octavia, two of the largest boots in the large-car table
• Browse every wagon on Australian sale
• Best SUV boot space in Australia

Boot volumes are manufacturer-published figures held against each car in our database, read live at build time from the 1,176 on-sale rows in the body styles this page covers. That is not every on-sale row: utes and commercial vans also carry published volumes, and they are counted on their own pages rather than here. Where a manufacturer document names the measurement standard it is shown; where it does not, the basis is unstated and figures should not be compared closely. No figure on this page is estimated, converted or inferred, and cars with no published figure are listed with the gap visible rather than removed.