3-door hatchback cars with baby?

Hi All,

We're about to move house and will need a 2nd car as once we move my DH will drive to work.

Does anyone use a 3-door hatchback car with a baby in a car seat (rear facing)? Lots of the cheaper small cars seem to be 3-doors, but I'm not sure if this is practical with a car seat!?!

Thanks,

Bertie

Hi Bertie

There's a thread here about it :D Hope that helps.

I have a 4 door Astra Hatch which is too small. When Mackenzie was first born I had to drive our commodore because the Safe n Sound car seat would not fit correctly in the back seat. It touched the front seat (in the baby position) when the passenger front seat was in a position of comfort for the passenger. I also like the seat in the middle of the car but this was hopeless if my husband was driving as he is tall and needs the seat back as far as it could go and then it touched the car seat which was no good. Once the car seat was turned around (still in the middle of the car) when my husband drives he often gets his shoulder tapped with Mackenzies foot! The other problem I found, with a hatch is t is impossilbe to get a pram in and out as having the seat in the middle the strap goes to the base of the hatch making it only practical if I use my stroller. I have used the commodore up until 6 weeks ago (Mackenzie is nearly 2) when my husband needed a new car for work so he sold it and now drives the new one. Needless to say the Astra is now on the market.

Your 4-door Astra doesn't fit a baby seat Nikbrad? :-k We have a 2005 Astra hatch as well and ours fits just fine. We did purposely by a 'compact' model of carseat, knowing that many of the plush/fancy models probably wouldn't fit. We have the seat in the middle of the backseat; and it is the IOC Baby GoSafe model (RRP around $170). It's not fancy but it works just fine for Maddy and as both DH & I are quite tall, we still have plenty of leg room in the front seats.

Our Astra is a 2002 model (Hatch) and with hopes of a larger family it just dosn't work!!

We had no luck with this - we had a Lancer coupe which we loved but we had to get rid of it - alas :(