Baby car seat fits?

[rugby4u21]

Hello fellow LGT'ers

Well..my daughter is gettin a bit older now and bigger now.(shes 1) The CEO got a car seat for her SUV (no biggie) but i need to know if anyone has had any issues with fitting certain car seats in the car. I got a 05'LGT. I was looking at the sureride DLX cuz i like the patterns and plus its a black car and need at least something to go with the color scheme of the interior. Please let me know

thanks

Mikey
05'LGT

[TSi+WRX]

That looks like it should be OK in terms of fit, but in all honesty, you never know.

What we did with my daughter was to bring her to the store with us, so that she can sit in the seats while in the store, and then so that we can take the seat out to the car with us, to test-fit in the vehicle.

We'd offer to leave our keys or some other valuable as collateral, and in some cases, the store clerk accompanied us out to the vehicle. Go during off hours for bigger stores such as Toys-R-Us/Babies-R-Us, or go to a specialty store.

The trick with the BL/BP is just that it's not all that big inside.

Width becomes a concern if you're trying to fit two more adult passengers in the rear in addition to the car-seat, or, even worse, trying to fit three child-seat/boosters across the rear bench.

Length is a concern mainly only when your child is in a rear-facing setup. Here, since the rear-facing seat needs to have a certain amount of angle/recline, the front seat will need to sacrifice its recline if you need rearward travel for your/your passenger's legs. You can potentially get an inch more space by raising the headrest (so that the top of the child-seat slots in between the top of the front seat and the bottom of its head-rest). My wife is only about 5 ft. 2 inches tall, so she had plenty of leg room in the front passenger seat as well as sufficient recline while our daughter was rear-facing. We had a Britax Marathon as a step-up from her infant carrier, and that monster of a seat still cleared with no issues, rear-facing with the proper recline.

[TSi+WRX]

Here's a past post I made on the SubaruForester.com Forums:


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One parent to another, think nothing of it. Glad to be of-service. :Banane14:



We used a Graco SnugRide system, too, with Anna. She stayed in that until she was ready to go forward-facing (which was why we never had her in the Britax Marathon in rear-facing format), at just over 1 year.

In both my '05 Legacy sedan as well as my wife's '05 WRX sedan, with the rear-facing Graco seat/base combo, the seat's handle made contact with the junction between the headrest (the WRX's was "integrated," so you'll have to use your imagination a bit :wink and the seat back. I actually set up both cars so that the seat-back angle for the passenger (the seat was placed behind the passenger's seat) was at a decently comfortable enough angle for both me and the wifey, but did not compromise the safety/angle of the infant seat.

Set up as-such, in Sara's car, she (5'4", on a good day ) could ride decently comfortably for short stretches of about 45 minutes. Any longer than that, and it would start wearing on her, mainly due to the seat-recline angle (or lack thereof). I could squeeze-in for errands, but I much preferred sitting behind her, with her in the driver's seat, instead.

In my Legacy, Sara was much more comfortable, but my 6'2" buddy couldn't even get in. :icon_razz:



DEFINITELY bring the seat with you.

Either that, or ask to test-drive the car for longer, and see about bringing the car out to a larger independent baby-stuff shop or a Babies-R-Us (which should let you do so, if you leave some collateral, yep, I'm speaking out of experience :icon_cool, and have an afternoon of fitting several seats to each car.

Ideally, the latter might be better, as it should give you many more options, but I don't know if a car-dealer with whom you don't have a pre-existing relationship would allow that (for example, we're "third timers" for our Subaru dealership, and they know us - the floor manager was our sales-person, some 4+ years ago; they let Sara and I take a Forester for an entire afternoon, no limits, with no collateral)....

But for now -

I broke out our spare Britax Marathon, and mocked-up a couple of shots for you. I apologize for the poor quality of the pix. I did not realize that I should have placed something more visible in the shot, for "scale," until I just reviewed these pix, now. I messed with the contrast and brightness a bit, to bring out the difference between the seat-back and the baby-seat. :icon_redface:

The tan, rear-facing seat, behind the driver's seat, with my daughter's "Baby Big-Girl" in it (please don't tell my daughter I was playing with it! :yell is the spare mock-up.

It is *NOT* properly LATCH'ed in - once LATCH'ed, it'll actually give you a bit more free-space, as it will significantly indent into the seat cushion.

This is with my wife, who is 5'2" or so ("I'm 5'4", on a good day!")...her driving position:



There's quite a bit of room left, about 3 inches or so, for even more recline (we share the same recline).

With my driving position:



There's likely going to be an inch more for recline, if the seat's properly LATCH'ed.

Remember, I sit fairly close to the wheel - not NASCAR close, but my right foot, if her '09 FXT had a clutch, would be able to easily floor the clutch pedal...that's the way I sit in my '05 Legacy, which is a stick-shift.

Below is what it looks like when the Marathon is in forward-facing mode, properly secured via LATCH. The tan Marathon in the background is the mock-up, still the same, not secured, with the seat in MY driving position.



The passenger's seat is set-up so that I'd be comfortable, sitting there.



^ And here's my arm, for "scale."

Like I said, I'm about 6' even, on a medium frame. You can probably approximate size/distance by that. :wink:

And here's a picture of the Marathon, forward facing, properly secured, in my '05 Legacy.



Hope this helps!