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My trusty Mitsubishi Magna is getting a bit long in the tooth and is starting to make noises that suggest imminent and expensive repair bills. By happy coincidence there's some money in the bank and so I am looking for a replacement.

Ideally that would be a large station wagon with a three litre diesel engine, an automatic gearbox and a good selection of safety systems. Unfortunately the only cars that meet those criteria in Australia are the BMW 5-series and the E-class Mercedes, both of which cost about four times what I can afford. I'm also not sure that I'd be entirely comfortable lobbing my slobbering dog or half a hundredweight of timber in the back of a car costing $120k and upholstered in leather and luxurious wool carpets.

Excluding the insanely expensive European offerings what's left? From Holden there's the Commodore, but it's the last hurrah of the VT version that sprang off the drawing board in the mid nineties, and is hardly state of the art. Ford's Falcon wagon is aimed squarely at photocopier repair technicians (semi-elliptical leaf springs, for God's sake) and is only drivable if loaded to the gunnels. The Japanese manufacturers have completely abandoned the large wagon - the demise of the Magna in 2005 meant that not one of them makes anything bigger than a compact.

So what's left? Only two choices I'm afraid: an SUV or a people mover. And those options present a few problems...