It's an odd thought, in this golden age for family transportation, but people used to cope. People had children, often in numbers, and they drove those children around without purchasing a vehicle the size of a bread van. I grew up in a family of six, which probably could have made good use of a people carrier, had such a thing existed. But we travelled about in a Morris Minor, sitting on each other's heads.
People won't tolerate that now. These days, children from six months upwards require their own aircraft-style reclining seat, drinks holder, personal stowage pocket and tip-down table device. If you don't offer them these facilities as standard, they simply won't go anywhere with you. Many of today's parents face a straightforward decision: buy 20 grand's worth of luxury bus or have no family life worth speaking of.
The VW Sharan - which first came out five years ago, but which is now back with us in a set of restyled, second-generation models - is 20 grand's worth of luxury bus. Twenty-five grand's worth if you want the Sport V6 version with the five-speed tiptronic gearbox.
It has drinks holders coming out of its ears, or rather its dashboard and seats. It is imposingly roomy and tall (from a seat in the back, you can see over hedges and into people's bedrooms). It accommodates seven people comfortably (so long as at least two of them are small). Nobody is required to sit on anybody else's head. It's full of light - inevitably, given that it contains as much glass as a medium-sized conservatory. And it goes pretty fast and handles like a car. Well, more like a car than like a bread van.
A shame, then, about that name, which seems to cry out for a VW Tracey as a companion piece. The idea is that you should stress the second syllable ("Sha- ran ") but in any case, when it comes to car names, VW seem heroically untroubled by the possibility of unfortunate resonances in the British marketplace. This, after all, is the company that produces a vehicle called a Bora (named after a wind, apparently, rather than after somebody you wouldn't want to be trapped with at a party).
It's German, so the doors go chunk rather than poing, and it's a VW, so everything about it is reassuringly solid, properly anchored to what it's meant to be anchored to. It has lots of tidy pieces of design, such as the doorhandles, the catch on the rear door and the cute silver bullets that hold the additional indicators on the side of the car. At night, the clocks light up mauve, which is very nice, assuming you like mauve.
What's more, you can jigger about with the seating plan - fold the rear seats down to create tables, push seats back or pull them out. At their own request, I posted my children in the seats right at the back, which seemed to have for them the same allure that rear coach seats on school trips will hold for them in a few years' time. The fact is, they could monkey about with impunity there because, from where I was, they might as well have been in the car behind.
But if you wish, you can get front seats that spin through 180 degrees, enabling you to face your passengers around a small work surface. (Note: best not try this while the car is in motion.) I can only think that when VW refer to possible "business applications" for the Sharan, they mean this aspect, which in effect reconfigures the vehicle as a mobile conference room. Alternatively, you can remove all five of the rear seats altogether and convert your Sharan into the thinking man's white van.
Beyond its adaptability, though, perhaps the most impressive thing about the Sharan is the evidence it offers of VW's familiarity with parental paranoias. The button that locks all the doors from the inside is thoughtfully placed beside the window controls, just by your right hand, so you can slam your fist down on it if you see anyone trying to escape (or, perhaps more urgently, if you see any further children trying to get in).
Also, the car comes with a giant band of red reflectors and brake lights, extending the entire width of the back door, and there's another stripped brake light running along the top of the rear window. That's quite some display. When you slow down, planes at 30,000ft are going to know about it. It's like a big, nervous, electric "Child on board" sticker.
All this, and it isn't even all that ugly. Seen head on, the car looks like the Eurostar - big-nosed, but kind of go-ahead. VW have restyled the bonnet so that it arches up in the middle, but you still, of course, can't see where it ends from the driver's seat, so your ability in particular to park the car successfully depends on the development of a kind of sixth sense about its length (which does, inexplicably, come after a while).
Even so, a thrill to own and drive? Of course not; it's a people carrier. Like the song says: "The wheels on the bus go round and round, all day long."
The lowdown
Price on the road: from £18,645
Top speed: 110mph
0-62 mph: 15.2 seconds
Fuel consumption: 29.1mpg
On the stereo: Nelly the Elephant
At the wheel: Tony Blair
En route for: Legoland; the Dordogne
