With cars getting larger and the challenges faced when trying to find a good parking spot, especially in a city, having parking aids has become very appealing in today’s car market.
In recent years, technology focused on making parking easier for motorists has become more sophisticated and far more accessible to the general public. Quite a few popular family cars are now available with driving aids which allow it to park itself (to some extent) during parallel parking or bay parking manoeuvres.
Which cars are the best for those keen to gain such parking assist technology? Read our guide to the five cars with parking assist to find out, and learn more about the technology itself.
Best cars with parking assist
Tesla Model S
The fully-electric Tesla Model S is not only a zero-emissions car and an impressively luxurious motor, it’s also a shining example of what can be achieved with modern parking technology.
This Tesla’s parking assist technology is not only capable of undertaking parallel and perpendicular parking manoeuvres, it’s even capable of driving itself in and out of a garage without even having the driver inside. The self-park feature is part of the Enhanced Autopilot package.
Neither this option pack or the car itself is exactly what you'd call cheap, but if you’ve got the budget then this is a very nice, practical luxury car to have, with cheap running costs and flurry of self-parking talents.
Ford Focus
The Ford Focus is one of the most popular and dependable family cars in the UK market. In hatchback or estate form, the Focus is a stylish, comfortable, well-equipped motor that’s great to drive and is offered with a wide choice of engines.
There’s plenty of useful technology you can get with a new Focus and among the options available is Ford’s Active Park Assist. This feature, activated by the simple press of a dashboard button, makes the car search for nearby suitable parallel parking spaces it can fit into. When one is found, the driver can let the car do all the tricky work with the steering.
Volvo XC90
The most luxurious and technologically-advanced Volvo to date, the XC90 is an incredibly comfortable and versatile SUV with impressive performance figures and yet a very relaxing drive.
Parking in a large SUV like the XC90 can be a tricky thing, so to have automatic parking assist features would be very welcome - and Volvo offers just that.
As part of the Xenium option pack, which is worth a couple of grand, the XC90 adds Active Park Assist Pilot which gives the big SUV the ability to steer itself during parallel parking. You also get a 360-degree view parking camera to make life easier when undertaking parallel parking, bay parking or other potentially tricky manoeuvres.
Skoda Superb
The Superb is an impressive family executive car tand is the most upmarket car in the Skoda range - yet it still represents good value for money.
With the SE, SE L executive and Sportline models, you can add park assist to the Skoda Superb as an option, which costs just under £600. It’s also a standard feature if you go for the range-topping Laurin & Klement trim.
It still requires braking and gearstick input from the driver, but having park assist is very welcome on a large, flagship car like the Superb.
Volkswagen Golf
Established as a well-made, reliable all-rounder, the Volkswagen Golf continues to find new and interesting ways to improve, even when it’s already widely-considered one of the best family cars on the market.
It’s no real surprise then to learn that the VW Golf is another current car which offers park assist. As an option worth just under £500, adding park assist to a Golf is considerably cheaper compared to what you have to pay to add it to most other cars. A new Golf with park assist onboard will also feature a rear-view camera as standard.
Volkswagen’s Park Assist is able to move and steer your car into spaces in either one move or several if it’s a particularly tight spot. All the driver needs to control is the brakes (and gearstick if necessary).
What is parking assist?
Parking assist (also known as just park assist or active park assist), is an automated parking aid which utilises an array of sensors, cameras and radar technology to function.
For more details on just how parking assist works and how to use it, you can read our separate guide about it here.