Hellobee Boards

I don't know much about the Atlas or the Palisade but I would avoid the traverse up until the 2018 redesign. Up until the redesign there was only one tether anchor in the third row for forward facing seats but it was also so tight back there that most rear facing seats couldn't fit. The headrests were also too short (outboard) or not there (middle) in the third row making it hard to safely put adults back there.

I would look at the car seat lady and ask on Car Seats for the Littles. I do know the honda pilot is super car seat friendly and has decent trunk space.

When I said car seats I was including boosters, kids are ideally in boosters until 10-12. Some high back boosters require headrests and kids in no back boosters require head support to the top of their ears (just like adults). Many third rows have low headrests so it's definitely something to pay attention to. Or if you like to be able to latch a booster in instead of buckling it back up whenever a kid isn't riding (to prevent it from being a projectile).

I agree with a previous poster - if you are using the third row for seating, trunk space tends to be fairly small in three row SUVS, unless you look at the giant ones. You could consider a bench seat in the middle row to have the option for three across if you need a lot of trunk space.

I usually drive a minivan but got rear ended last winter and we ended up renting the Buick Enclave for two months and I really liked it. I have 3 kids (then 6 in a five point booster, 3 in a convertible, and 1.5 year old in a RF convertible). The car had pilot seats and the back was open so my oldest could easily climb in the third row just like the minivan.

One thing was the trunk was non existent. We have the Nuna for the stroller which is kind of big and it took up the whole trunk.

We just got a Kia Telluride. Chose it over the Atlas because of safety ratings. I chose the Telluride over Palisade because of asthetics. Chose the Telluride over the Tahoe because of cost. Let me know if you have any specific questions about the Telluride. We really like it so far. My husband loves it. I just am still getting used to the fact that I'm driving a Kia.

@agold: I'm laughing so hard at this b/c when we were originally researching cars, I almost immediately put the Telluride out of the running b/c it's a Kia.

The Telluride and Palisade were pretty neck and neck for us. We really just liked the salesperson better at Hyundai a lot better than the one at Kia and there were Palisades in stock while the Telluride had to be ordered. That and they wouldn't lock in a price on the Telluride when you ordered it. Super weird. Given that they only had the base model at the dealer to look at, I had a hard time buying something before I could actually see it.

@Mommy Finger: Okay, I'm glad I'm not the only one who balked at driving a Kia. We considered it last year, but there were none in stock. They always seem to go fast, yet I almost never see one on the road. We got ours during this covid debacle and we got it $1K under msrp. Its a top model or whatever and is fully loaded. No real covid deals, though, because they have no problem selling them. VW Atlas had deals galore. I just don't consider myself a VW person, either. The Telluride beat it on paper in all regards. I am sure the Pallisade does too, but I admittedly didn't look into one of those. The Pallisade looks pretty great, though. And I am a fan of the Genesis cars.