Hey, youse guys, I'm a talkin' to you!
Mazda3, WRX, Saabaru, and the like owners with miniature human collection, how do your rear-facing car seats fit? Which seats do you, which car do you have, and how big are the minions? I'm trying to see if downsizing would be good for me.
Especially interested in MS3 discussion.
If you are tall (I'm 6'4") forget it in a WRX, Saabaru, and the Legacy isn't much better.
Can't tell you on the MS3
I am 5'10" on a good day, and have short legs. For reference, I can fit behind myself in the 5 in the 2nd row, but not again in the 3rd. I can fit in the front, car seat in the middle, and a small adult in the back of the 5.
I'm about your size, and my rear facing Britax seat barely fits behind me in my Legacy GT wagon. I don't see how it would fit in a WRX.
The newer WRXs they fit fine, for most seats. I've had one in the back of my 09 (behind my seat) with no problems and no adjustment of the driver's seat. I'm 6'0 with fairly long legs.
Earlier (pre-08) WRX had about 3-4" less space there and were much tighter for any backseat passengers. My 6'8 friend has sat in the back of mine on 2-hour drives before with no major complaints.
the fact that I actually took a photo of it should tell you that this question comes up a lot, lol. And this is damn near the bulkiest, stupidest carseat ever, in my opinion. Wife got it....
note that they aren't strapped in, just posed for the pic. Strapped in both seats pull back away from the back of the driver's seat with no contact.
That said, the kids are rarely in my car. The family-mobile is the Sequoia. It can fit about 6 carseats in it, lol.
You say you want to know about mazda3s... Specifically the ms3, with small human transport? Funny you should mention that.... Because I have all of the above! I'm 6' on the button. I can't do so a car seat behind me. Center or passenger no big deal. Seat we've used is a recaro.... Something. I'll take pics. Before that it was a graco snugride carrier. Fit I'm the center like a treat.
Rear facing car seats are huge. Good luck fitting one behind anyone larger than 5'4". Even then you have to run the front seat all the way forward and crush your wife. I could barely fit my sons rear facing car seat in my B6 A4 Avant. Sold the car and got an allroad instead.
In my wife's 2005 Mazda 3, I can't drive it with our rear-facing infant seat behind me. I mean, I literally can't navigate my legs into position to hit the pedals. I'm 6'. Now, with the front-facing seat, it's no problem, so we keep the 4 year old behind me (well, she's in a booster now, which makes it even easier), and the rear facing behind my wife.
Prepare for a year or two of torture if you need to drive a 3 with a rear facing behind you. We'll probably replace her car with a 6 when it's time, but it only has 180k, so that'll probably be 10 years from now...
Forward facing or rear?
We used forward facing seats occassionally when my wife had her '08 Honda Fit. At the time, the twins were around 2 to 3 years old. They fit easily and it was no problem. My only concern was that the Fit is narrow, so they were too close to the side of the car for my comfort...i.e rib cage right in line with armrest.
I'll pipe in here to remind that there's a wide variety of carseats of different sizes, too. People often use it as an excuse to buy a new car instead of buying a new seat, but this forum needs no such excuse to change cars.
A good rough rear-facing size comparison is here http://carseatblog.com/22818/the-ultimate-rear-facing-convertible-space-comparison-review-size-matters/ and the associated forum has a section for physical dimensions of most seats.
Once kiddo has good head control, the seat can be more like 30º upright than 45º so the inconvenience might be more like months than years.
You can sometimes get lucky with the center position, and a tall rear-facing seat will go between the seatbacks or headrests. It's all basically trial and error.
I've fit a Diono Radian into some pretty tight cars. It's sometimes nontrivial to install, but is very narrow and the kid sits low; headroom to buckle in is also often a practical constraint with some of the higher seats in GRM-friendly cars.
My 95th percentile daughter got to 4 1/2 rear-facing in a Radian. (The huge statistical safety benefit of staying rear-facing allows some mental rationalization of putting said kid in some rather unsafe vehicles. For future search results: The Radian is great in a family-car grade NC Miata. The NA has a long seatbelt stalk that needs an unapproved modification but fits nicely otherwise. I also highly recommend sunglasses with a velcro strap around the back.)
The problem with minature humans is that rear-facing car seats take up too much room. As soon as they're big enough to face forward, then they are within kicking distance of your back.
Source: Former owner of a 2004 WRX and MINI. Current owner of 2007, 2009 model mini-humans.
(I went back to a proper 2-seater and got one of those ridiculously oversized crew-cab tow vehicles that's typically used to haul <100lbs of mini-human cargo.)
In reply to irish44j:
A brief threadjack, that seat looks like a Graco Nautilus. Good seats (I own six of them, don't ask) but not particularly effective in a rear-facing application due to size. FYI, they were also just recalled by Graco for defective buckles.
For rear-facing seats, we ended up using slightly smaller Britax Roundabouts which fit reasonably in my wife's '95 Civic and my '98 Maxima. They weren't rear-facing for long, though, as we flipped them right when we reached the height/weight/age thresholds.
I have a Britax rear facing for my son. He's almost big enough to put in a forward facing seat. He has good head control, just waiting for him to put a few more pounds on. The seat is truly enormous, but I love the way it integrates with the Britax stroller.
I can't see how a rear-facing seat would fit in the back of my 3. I'm 5'9". The Mazda is a 2012. There is not a lot of room back there. My nephew uses just a booster now and his feet were hard against the back of my seat. Until I told him to stop kicking the seat, that is.
In my MKIV GTI the rear facing seat had to be in the middle or behind the passenger seat. I'm 5'11", but actually sit closer than expected to the dash. I guess my torso is where most my height is compared to my legs and arms.
Getting that complete assembly in and out of a 2 door hatch was a whole other bitch...
tdisalvo wrote: In reply to irish44j: A brief threadjack, that seat looks like a Graco Nautilus. Good seats (I own six of them, don't ask) but not particularly effective in a rear-facing application due to size. FYI, they were also just recalled by Graco for defective buckles. For rear-facing seats, we ended up using slightly smaller Britax Roundabouts which fit reasonably in my wife's '95 Civic and my '98 Maxima. They weren't rear-facing for long, though, as we flipped them right when we reached the height/weight/age thresholds.
Yep, it is and thanks for looking out. The wife unit is all over it and we already replaced them. And yeah, it's a big mofo. Thankfully there's about a foot more room in the Sequoia where it usually resides :)
I wanted to post it knowing that it was one of the bigger ones, to show him the room even with a monster seat in an 09 wrx :)\
I had a horrible experience with a car seat in my WRX. The wife usually sat in the backseat with the baby because she would be cramped. That and her stroller had to be positioned awkwardly in the rear. Waiting for irish's response...and yes I saw your pictures. You must be under 5'6 lol.
My 2013 civic si 4-door - it fits everything well. Stroller, car seat, lots of luggage a friend, the wife, etc.
Thanks for the all of the advice everyone. We have a Britax B-Safe and an EvenFlo Symphony. They seem to be decently compact.
DirtyBird222 wrote: I had a horrible experience with a car seat in my WRX. The wife usually sat in the backseat with the baby because she would be cramped. That and her stroller had to be positioned awkwardly in the rear. Waiting for irish's response...and yes I saw your pictures. You must be under 5'6 lol.
All I can say is what I said....that said the few times the childseats have been in my car, nobody has been sitting in the back with them. Just me and the kids. But that's a rare occurrance that the kids are in my car, so I really don't care. Just saying what my experiences are, lol.
And I'm a shade over 6' tall. The photos show the seat position front and back. You must just be rollin' gangsta style with the heavy lean-back.......
You'll need to log in to post.
