What size car to hire?

My OH is picking me up in Manchester. He will have to drive from Glasgow down there to get me. We're fairly certain our car, a Kia Ceed, isn't large enough to handle all of my suitcases and our cats. I'll be coming in with 2 large 29" suitcases, 2 carry-ons and 2 medium (~28"x21"x22") pet carriers. We don't have our smaller cat carriers as I packed them with the rest of our belongings, which are on the slow boat. Stupid of me not to think that far ahead. Both cats could feasibly fit into one carrier, but I'm guessing they're going to be pretty stressed and I don't think it would be a good idea to put them into a such a confined space for a 3-4hr drive.

We're looking into him hiring a car for the trip. He's not that familiar with car models over there, since he's a recent transplant himself. Any suggestions for cars that could handle everything would be most appreciated.

See if he can hire either an estate or a hatchback then you can drop the back seats down

My husband and I had a ton of luggage and we hired a class D vehicle and that was large enough. And like Tykeman said, an estate car should be good too.... Just depends if he wants to drive a long car or not since an estate car is what we call a station wagon. We had an estate car when we moved that was diesel fueled and it was great.

Thanks for the info. I'll remember to tell him to look into a class D car. We have a hatchback now, but my OH said the seats don't fold down completely flat, so we aren't sure if everything will fit. 

Hatchback should be fine, even if the seats don't fold. Good luck.

Just as update. We ended up not hiring a car, and just using our car. It's a Kia Pro'Ceed. By laying the seats down, we were able to fit in two 30" suitcases, a carry-on, a rolling duffle bag, and 2 medium animal crates (28"x21"x22"). And we a little bit of room left over, so I was pretty well impressed with how much we could fit in it.