Britax Marathon and LATCH confusion-can somebody help?

[corrie]

I just got back from having DD's shiny new Britax Marathon installed by the car seat techs at a local fire dept. There were some problems and confusion and I'm a bit concerned about the results so I thought I'd ask here to see if others know more:

DD is 5 mos old and (obviously) rear-facing. I drive a 2001 Hyundai Elantra. The techs said that in order to use the anchors, DD's seat could not be in the center position. Likewise, they said that the tether "hooks" are at the top of the car (near the headrests) and there is no place listed in the car manual for a "floor attachment" This would apparently require an "Australian" tether position, with the tether going up and over baby's head to attach to the upper tether hook. They say they advise against this because if it broke for some reason, it would go flying right into DD's face. However, they couldn't do the preferred "Swedish" tether mount because there's no indication in the car manual of where to do that on the floor.

So, now DD's carseat is anchored but not tethered and is behind the passenger seat vs. the middle. I just don't feel entirely comfortable about this since I know that there are safer conditions for her.

Does anybody know more about this than I do? What might you recommend to keep this seat as safe as possible (especially since I intend to keep her rear facing for as long as possible).

Thank you!
-Corrie

[Joolsplus2]

Why not just use the seatbelt and put her in the center? Seatbelts are just as safe as LATCH, when the seat is installed properly, and then you'd have the additional distance from the point of a side impact.
Also, there are few if any cars at all that make mention of where to tether your RF seat to, so you need to just go with britaxes recommendations of finding a solid, structural, nonmoving part under the front seat that doesn't interfere with the movement of the seat. If you can't find a place like that in your car (and sedans can be hard to...i REALLY had to climb UNDER my seat in my toyota prius and feel around down there to find a place to tie the tether connector strap for mine.
I think their warning about tethering australian style is unwarranted...tether anchors and hooks are very, very strong, and there's only one case in testing where they broke...in the 2000 toyota echos, which were recalled and replaced with stronger anchors.
Have you seen this page? http://www.angelfire.com/wa3/isakswings/ratetherrf.html It has tethering ideas that might help you. If you just cannot find a place to tether it, that's really ok...rearfacing seats are VERY safe, even untethered. As long is the seat moves less than one inch side to side or front to back at the beltpath, then it's fine (even if the top seems to wiggle quite a bit, it will still do a very good job of protecting in a crash).
good luck,