Hi there,

How many of you have put a child seat in the car?

My question is how much is the front passenger affected?

It looks to me that you'll have to have the passenger seat forward quite a bit in order to give the child in the back adequate foot room. Not a child sitting on the seat, a child sitting IN a car seat.

Thanks!

 

My baby seat is behind the passenger seat. When my 3 year old is Motoring, I put the passenger seat all the way forward, but should I have a passenger in the front, then he doesn't have much room, so what he like to do is to have the seat back lowered a little so that he can rest his little legs on the sides of the head rest, otherwise he'll kick on the seat backs, but the he knows to take his shoes off first.

 

I hate kids!! See that is a joke.

 

>>I hate kids!! See that is a joke.
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I'm sure you just meant that you hate their feet on your upholstery!

 

There is a post on MINI2 where someone actually took pictures of a rear facing baby seat (sorry I am not savvy enough to put a link). However, it does appear to be a tight fit for the Passenger. It may also depend on the make of the baby seat as his looked far larger than my Graco.

I too am concerned about my baby and husband fitting comfortably, but the two should never have to meet. That's what SUV's are for.

Lolo

 

I have a 2 year old and a 4 year old...both in booster seats, and both love motoring. But, a few observations...

1) The front seats have to be moved closer than I would want (I'm about 5' 11&quot in order to give either kid ANY foot room at all. This is not a problem for the passenger side, but can be for the driver.

2) It's better to put the smaller kid behind the driver's seat when I'm carrying both. His feet don't hang down as much in the footwell...and that's a good thing since there's really no space in the footwell. Obviously, if I'm only carrying one kid, he goes behind the passenger seat.

3) Take care when repositioning the seat/seat back after your child has gotten in the car. Mine have learned how to keep their feet in the air when I slide the seat back...otherwise, I get YOWWWW!!!! when smash their feet with the "memory" seat. BTW, I've found that the seat will indeed return to it's adjusted position, BUT in the process of doing this you end up sliding the seat back further than its final position, and then foward again to lock. This ends up reducing the footwell room temporarily even further than usual.

4) Put a towel on the rear seat before putting a car seat on top of it. I have the leatherette, and it gets all scuffy from the car seat bottom. I'd imagine that the real leather would be even worse.

5) It is not possible to carry 2 kids, a front seat passenger, a driver AND a stroller (even the small so-called "umbrella strollers&quot in a MINI. This is what they invented minivans and American cars for.

6) If your child has the least inclination toward recurrent car sickness, think twice about motoring with him/her. It gets REALLY cramped back there and unless you want to drive with the windows and/or sun roof open, there's not much air back there either. Need I say more?

7) My wife (when I'm driving) reports that it's a lot harder to turn around in the passenger seat and attend to the needs of backseat passengers in the MINI than in other cars. Those sport seats really DO do a good job of holding one foward in-place. So even though the little fellers will be mighty close to the back of your head in the MINI, you can't reach them. This leads to all sorts of snacking, gravity-related, and sibling rivalry crises.

In short, I love my kids, I love my MINI, and my kids even love my MINI...but after 3 months of this, I can report that kids and MINIs may not be a heavenly match. Thank goodness for my "other" car.

 

I have a three year old son, and a ten year old daughter, and they just love to take the MINI wherever we go. The three year old sits in his car seat behind the passenger seat, and my daughter rides behind the driver seat and she sits with her legs cross folded. On rough roads, it bounces pretty good in the back seat but my son says "I like the bumps dad, drive faster." We usually take a short "roadtrip" every weekend to the coast or just to grandma's house. The kids only want to take "the blue car with the white top." My 323i and E320 just stay at home.
Cheers!

 

With wife and I and kids in the car, there's no problems. (Boy, age 9 and girl age 7)

But on two other occasions we've stuffed four adults in my car to go for a spin. The two tallest combos were a 6'2" guy in the back with a guy about 5'11' in the front, and a 6'0" (maybe a little taller) and 5'10" in the back.

I can think of one other time with four people where the shortest person was about 5'10".

I've also carried a couple of motorcycle wheels (bigger than I thought!), a fairy princess castle (oh what I go through), groceries, boxes of stuff, etc.

As far as kids go, I'd say this. If they're teenagers, and full-size, and you wanted to do a lot of trips, that you should see a therapist

No, seriously, for my kids, I'm actually looking forward to a trip in the car. I've sat in the back seat before (6'0&quot with my brother in the front (5'10&quot and it felt comfy. Not all-day-long comfortable but bearable.

Limiting factor to me seems to be luggage space if you have four. Or cupholders. I remember romping around France in a little citroen with another couple and that car wasn't much bigger, and we were in it for hours on end! Just have to adjust your thinking.

Ciao,

Jeff

 

Oh yeah--almost forgot. Kids love to be picked up, or dropped off, in the MINI. They don't give me a 2nd look, but are genuinely beaming to see the car! <grin>