• Absolutely enormous interior
• Seven seats fitted as standard
• Up to 1,806 litres of boot space

How much space is there?

An awful lot. The SsangYong Rexton’s cabin is huge, offering seating for seven as standard. There’s plenty of space up front for the driver and passenger – headroom is great even if you have the seat in its highest position and there’s loads of elbow room.

Space in the second row is equally plentiful. Headroom is good and legroom is generous, as the Rexton has an almost completely flat floor in the rear. That means passengers in the middle won’t be fighting for foot space with those in the outer two seats.

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Surprisingly, there’s also a good amount of space in the Rexton’s rear-most seats. Normally adults need to fold themselves up like pretzels to fit in the back of a seven-seat SUV, but our six-foot tester could fit reasonably comfortably, although his head did brush against the rear pillar.

There’s another trade-off to the seven-seat layout. Boot space falls to just 240 litres with the back seats up, which isn’t anywhere near enough to fit all the luggage you’d need for a family holiday. However, this figure is 10 litres more than what’s available in the seven-seat SEAT Tarraco.

Boot space and storage

The Rexton is at its best in five-seat mode. With the third seating row stowed, there is 872 litres of space. Fold all the rear seats flat and the amount of available space swells to 1,806 litres. There’s also a two-position boot board which raises the level of the boot floor up to eliminate the lip up to the third seating row’s backrests.

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Because it’s such a massive car, SsangYong has found space for plenty of storage bins. There’s a huge cubby in the central armrest, deep door bins and a tray in the centre console that’s more than large enough for a modern flagship smartphone. Those in the rear are well-catered for, too. Second-row passengers get similarly cavernous door bins and accommodating pouches on the rear of the front seats. SsangYong even bothered to give the passengers in the third row their own storage trays, which is a nice touch.

Is it easy to park?

The Rexton’s a huge car so don’t expect it to be a breeze to park. SsangYong has thought of that, though – the entry-level model comes as standard with front and rear parking sensors, while the flagship Ultimate variant features a reversing camera. The upcoming Ultimate Plus model will also feature a 360-degree parking camera, which should make manoeuvring easier still.

The side mirrors are a good size, too, and you can angle them downwards using the controls on the driver’s door to prevent you from scraping the alloys along high kerbs. Just don’t expect any of this kit to work miracles in a tight multi-storey car park. You can’t get around the Rexton’s sheer size.

Safety

• Not yet tested by Euro NCAP
• Lots of standard assistance technology
• Standard front, side and curtain airbags

Euro NCAP hasn’t yet crash-tested the SsangYong Rexton, so we haven’t got any information about how it’ll perform in an accident. However, SsangYong has fitted it with lots of standard safety tech, including autonomous emergency braking, lane-departure warning, a speed limit warning, cruise control and seatbelt pretensioners.

There are lots of airbags, too. The Rexton features forward and side airbags for the driver and front passenger, side airbags for rear-seat passengers and curtain airbags running the length of the vehicle. The amount of equipment is certainly impressive on paper, but the fact it doesn’t have an official Euro NCAP score is a turn-off compared to rivals like the Kia Sorento and Peugeot 5008, both of which achieved a five star rating in their official crash tests.