Can Anybody Tell Me What It's like to Put Two Car Seats in a Subaru Impreza?

Jgirl.

Sorry - after my second? We bought a mini-van so I can't tell you what it's like. I would suggest you take the car seats to the dealership and try to install before you buy.

I had a Chevy Blazer with my first son - we had an LL Bean car seat that was too big for the seat (length wise) so we had to take it back. When I got pregnant, we decided that a Blazer was not going to work for us. We moved to a mini-van.

Now that they are older? It still comes in handy - especially when we go paint balling and have 5 kids with us.

Good luck! I hope you find the car that works for you and your family!! I know it's NOT an easy choice! Congratulations on your pregnancy!

I've got 4 boys. We bought a Suburban after our 3rd.

Tyler just bought an Escalade ESV last year. he loves it. We don't have car seats anymore but growing boys love the room!

I would consider buying the biggest car you can afford for the room and safety. Subaru's are very safe cars, but for a growing family? Not so good.

I actually took the car seats to the dealership and tried to install them in the back seat when we were looking at cars. I have my younger granddaughters all the time and ruled out a few cars that failed the car seat test.

I would probably advise you to get over your minivan hate and think about it. As your kids get older they get friends that you might want to come along on play dates to the park or some activity.

My older daughter has had a mini van for years and when it died she got another one. Great for hauling around lots of kids and stuff.

This doesn't answer your question - so skip if totally not helpful, just sharing some experience

If it's just the 4 of you, and you like your Protege, have you looked at the Mazda 5? We have friends who have this and it works really well for them. It drives like a car but it's like a very small (narrow) van and is excellent on mileage apparently. Just a thought. I do know it works well (enough space) with car seats. They had three car seats at one time.

My personal opinion on cars, and wished I'd thought about when our kids were very small, is that having additional space is the way to go. At first there's strollers, etc. But before you know it, there's gear. All kinds of gear. And friends you will be driving around. It sees like a good decision to go smaller/cost effective (we did this) but wasn't very functional later on.

The thing about a 2 row vehicle, your kids will have friends, kids will come over for playdate, you might want grandma or someone to go with you and hubby somewhere, and more issues.

Once you have a couple of kids you really should go for that 3rd row.

Do you drive 70+ all the time? Are you a highway driver? If you're driving local residential traffic most of the time you are pretty worried over things that won't likely happen.

SUV's were rolling over due to faulty tires, not faulty frame issues. Once they figured out that it was incorrectly made tires they don't roll. Our licensing worker told us we should get rid of our 15 passenger van due to those rollovers. We did some research, obviously we didn't want our kids to be harmed if we were in an accident. We found the tire issue and talked to the worker later on. She said they had found the same thing and that we didn't need to get rid of our van.

The thing that keeps me from driving an SUV is the gasoline issue. I don't want to double my gasoline expenses. We have a Dodge Crew Van. DVR and great sound system. All the kids love my van and want to ride with me all the time.

We keep a lot of kid friendly movies in the van all the time.