It all depends on how you define long and bulky. But no seven-seater is going to be exactly small, is it? That’s because, to accommodate the third row of seats necessary to seat seven a vehicle physically has to be a certain length and there’s just no getting around that.

But I take your point; a lot of the seven-seat SUVs out there do seem pretty big. Again, however, that’s not a bad thing if you plan to fill all three rows of seats and still have some room left for luggage. The smaller seven-seaters aren’t all that good at this as the third row gobbles up the luggage space, making these cars best for those who only need seven seats on an occasional basis. If that’s your situation there are lots of mid-sized seven seaters around, but they’re pretty much all SUVs.

And while it goes against your preference for a smaller vehicle, the very best seven-seaters aren’t SUVs. They’re usually people-mover vans such as the Ford Tourneo, Kia Carnival and VW ID. Buzz. In fact, some of these even seat eight. They’re also a lot better for accessing the rearmost row of seats and they’ll still have lots of luggage space even with all seats occupied. And, yes, they look big, but that’s physics for you.

In the meantime, you could look at slightly less bulky options including the Hyundai Santa Fe, Kia Sorento, Mazda CX-80 and Toyota Kluger. There’s also been speculation recently that Subaru’s seven-seat Tribeca might make a return to the Australian market.

It really doesn’t matter how fast you’re driving when a timing chain or timing belt breaks. If the engine is an interference design, then this failure has possibly turned the rest of the engine to junk. That’s because the valves and pistons have tried to occupy the same space at the same time, and widespread internal damage is the usually outcome.

From what I can gather, the V6 engine in your car is indeed an interference design, so the damage is possibly terminal. You could remove the cylinder head(s) to check, but if the engine has locked up, there’s a fair chance you’ll need to either rebuild the engine or replace it with a different one. You may also find that the cost of these repairs will be greater than the market value of the vehicle itself. At that point, you need to decide whether to repair it or start again with a new vehicle.

A modern automatic transmission is a very complex piece of equipment with a whole bunch of parts that have to be talking to each other for it to work properly. Your best plan of attack is to have the vehicle inspected by a transmission specialist who is familiar with this transmission and should be able to diagnose the fault.

But it sounds like there’s something broken or loose inside that is not allowing the engine’s power to be transferred to the car’s wheels. This could be anything form an input or output shaft, a clutch assembly, torque converter or even the gearsets themselves. Perhaps the fault is in the valve body (the part that actually selects each gear) but until it’s torn down and inspected, you won’t know what’s going on.

The other major cause of a car not moving when it’s in gear is that there’s a broken driveshaft or CV joint. The symptoms can be very similar, so check the whole driveline before committing to repairs.