convertible britax for our mazda?

[elke]

Hi,
dd has almost outgrown her infant seat at 4.5 months and we need to get going with the convertible seat purchase. I am thinking britax, and possibly the boulevard since it seems it will last the longest, however, since we still have the infant seat in the car I think it will be less easy this time to drive around and try out the seat in the car (because i really don't want to uninstall the infant seat too often!!) - so I was wondering if anyone has any experience installing in the mazda protege 5 - or the mazda 3 hatchback, which is almost the same car.
we found it quite difficult to fit any of the infant seats in it and ended up with the peg perego seat because it fit the best - so it would be really great if someone had any experience with seats in the mazda!
we would like to again put her in the middle, even if it means forgoing the latch.
thanks!
elke

[Aunt to sweet baby boy]

It will fit! My sister used to have the 3 hatchback and she had avi rf in a DC in the middle of the backseat. She is 5'10" and he dh who could also fit is 6'4" so i know that they had room in the front seat. It was tethered to the front passenger seat so it was not able to move back all the way but it was comfortable enough. She now has a Nissan Quest because climbing in and out of that tiny car was killing her back and there was no room for anything. Also the seat fit well with the belt in the center but i have since learnt that you can use Latch with Mazda/Ford cars with Britax seats. There should be something in the manual about that..

HTH

Ilana

[Joolsplus2]

I've done a Marathon in a newer Mazda wagon-y thing (um...I should know the name, yeah? lol... but I'm pretty sure it's 'the same' as what you are looking for), with no difficulty. And Mazda has a lovely exemption that you CAN put Britaxes in the middle (just double check that the middle latch bars are between 11 and 20 inches apart, that's the firm distance given by Mazda/Ford and Britax). I think I only installed it behind the passenger seat with LATCH, though, so I don't know if it would be the same in the center with seatbelt or LATCH, but I would *guess* that it would also work quite well there.

Hope someone else knows for sure! www.carseatdata.org might have an entry or two :)
Julie CPS Tech and mom to 2 in seats
http://www.cpsafety.com/articles/RFAlbum/SarahMA.aspx

[elke]

thanks so much for the input! i am so very tempted now to just buy the seat online this time instead of driving out to the dreaded bru!

[skipspin]

I don't know if you have gotten your seat yet, but I have installed DDs Wizard RFing and FF in the Mazda5. (The "vanish" new 6 seater based on the Mazda3) It fits great outboard (no middle seat) and the back (middle) seat only needs to be slid back if you need a RFing 45' angle. (I checked because we are planning on buying a used one sometime next year and will probably be expecting another baby by then.) The only downside is that if you had two kids RFing there would be no access to the back seat. Our DD will for sure be over 33 lb by the time we have our next, she is right at 30 lb now.
HTH
Joy
DD 8-21-03 RFing in WZ