Occasional kid transporter - how inconvenient do I go??

Well. New kid in the near future, so the Z06 isn't going to cut it, but what will? We'll use my wife's car majority of the time but I need to be able to drive the baby around occasionally. I commute at off hours in Milwaukee, so rarely deal with traffic. I'm trying to sort out if I want to finally ditch the stick in my DD and be able to focus more on the kids I'm transporting and have wife be able to drive my car.

But that's a minor detail. More interested in people's experiences with marginal kid cars... As in you can kinda get a rear facing seat in there but it's not fun. This will be maybe every few weeks or so. I prefer smaller cars so I'm reluctant to get something huge and then barely use it for kids transport. The Corvette feels big and clunky at times and I wouldn't mind going back to something that feels smaller. Yes I realize the Vette is relatively light but it's a pretty large car. Pondering 997 C2S, BMW M2, maybe used M3.

Whatever you get, try it with the actual carseat you're planning on using.

My Focus ST is a pain in the ass - the seat will only fit in the middle, due to the thickness of the Recaros. Not as useful as I thought it would be when I decided to buy a hot hatch as a second family car.

I will add that I considered a boost buggy type car but wife is probably going to end up in some flavor of AWD turbo Golf, hopefully R, so that seems too similar to me. I also will probably have a fully functional bonkers 240SX track car soon in place of the jackstand queen 240SX I currently own so I'm trying to avoid another turbo 4 to keep the fleet diverse.

If you're not going to use it much for child hauling just something with a bench in the back rather than buckets.

There are a couple slimline type baby seats that'll make it more tolerable if you need more room with the rear facing seats.

Yea I will mostly be driving solo in whatever I get, very occasional kid transport. Wife won't let me get another car or I'd keep the Z06 and get a used FiST for kids/winter duty. She likes small cars and minimalism which is nice in that she doesn't want to reflexively grab a huge SUV but also limits my options a bit. First world problems for sure.

Does the vette have a passenger airbag delete? Until you have two kids, there's your part time kid hauler!

But then I don't practice what I preach there. I made do with a sedan for commuting and wagon for baby dity - both shared between me and wife - with one kid but once the second was on the way we "upgraded" to two wagons. I do have fun cars, though; two relatively sensible cars and two silly cars.

She likes minimalism, but what do you like?

Ha, there's a weight based deactivation feature but I don't think I'd trust that with my kids life.

I'd have one more car if I had my druthers but it's a battle I'm not winning. She does a good job of reigning me in within reason. We live in a pretty modest area so flashy cars and big fleets stick out for sure.

I too say keep the Vette.
It is legal to place a car seat in the front of a 2 seat car.

Edit: but I see now you have written that you might not like to use the front seat.
I will say, I think the 911 will be even worse. Though it appears to have a back seat, you will find it to be largely unusable with a car seat.

The front seat seems pretty dicey for a rear facing seat. I'd have to figure out a manual airbag shutoff too.

The 911 sounds like the passenger seat would be all the way forward with the few rear facing seats that fit. I'm thinking it might make more sense to wait until kids are out of rear facing seats for that.

I have sat in the back seat of an E46 M3, but haven't attempted to put a rear-facing child seat in the back of one. I think a rear-facing seat should go ok in the back of one of those, assuming that front seat passenger is short or not present.

Might I suggest something from the V range of cars? They're not small, but they come in coupe, sedan AND wagon form. 400hp in the first gen, 550 in the second, 650 in the most recent. I think second gen sedans are the current sweet spot. Get one with a six speed and it's a supremely practical dad car.

As the father of a now almost 10 month old.I can tell you, all Car seats suck. They are huge, freaking impossibly huge. The newborn car seats with the detachable base are awesome as far as getting the kid in and out, while asleep, and pure ease of use putting baby in and out while still in the house before placing them as an assembly in the car. But these eat the most space. choose wisely.

I have recently swapped out to a belted in standard rear facing as my kid is a beast. But for the 4-5 months or so the newborn seat with the base that stays in place is the hot ticket...... Unless you want it to fit in a car. As others have noted already, buy the car seat, then the car. Its eye opening.

I do kid duty with the 1977 911 and the E46 M3 convertible, though the kids are now 10 and 12. I can't imagine trying a rear facing seat in the 911, and to be honest, until they are able to buckle themselves in, any car where it's hard to access the car seat is a real pain.

At one time I had two forward facing seats in the back of the 911. Most didn't fit. the butt bucket is too small and deep. To get these strapped in properly, I used tie downs instead of seatbelts. The M3 back seat is almost as sculpted and would also be challenging to find seats that fit.

I don't know if it's old age or the fact that I have a dedicated track car but I've become more and more attracted to performance sedans than fast coupes and convertibles for a street car. When an M5, one of the V cars or an S8 can deliver the performance and driving satisfaction that they do with four doors the inconvenience of a two door car seems almost silly to me.

I did rear facing and front facing child seats in the back of my old E46 M3 coupe. It was totally fine. The seats swing up way out of the way compared to, like, every other car :)

My daughter is 10 now, so we haven't done car seats or boosters for a long time. There are boosters and car seats that fit 911 back seats, but I never had to use any. I did have to do a booster with my son when I had my 968, but what my daughter calls the "butt pits" aren't as deep on the 968 as they are in the 996 or 997 (which she fits fine in for now ;) )

A buddy of mine used his 997.1 for occasional infant transport. He had the dealer install some sort of official set up in the passenger seat (I have to imagine Porsche charged handsomely for it) that disabled the airbag and made life easy with a rear facing seat.

I did rear faciing in a 2 door neon acr with no back seat, a regular cab s10 (first gen), and a c4 corvette. You can do it if you have to with the vette. And remember, its only about a year of rear facing. Thats 52 times in your case.

Porsche sells their own child seats. Just sayin....

Keep the vette and get a high quality seat. Slapping it in once a month is not going to kill you.

Don't ask me. When I learned my wife was pregnant, I sold the xc70 and bought the 996 Bass akwards I know

cmcgregor wrote: Porsche sells their own child seats. Just sayin....

seems the seat is about $500 and the airbag deactivation kit is around $260

IMHO, you really want a 4-door car. The trend is towards using rear-facing seats for longer and longer, CA just switched to requiring it for kids up to 2, and there's even talk of extending it further. Remember that you need to be able to buckle the kid into the seat, and if you don't have a rear door to open then that becomes very difficult when rear-facing.

Rear-facing seats are a tight fit even in many 4-door cars. If there's just one of them (no twins?), then you can slide the passenger seat forwards a long way, but that makes it tricky for tall passengers to sit there. If it's only going to be used occasionally with 2 adults and a kid, then this is probably OK.

I'd skip the Porsche, and do M3 only if it's a 4-door.

When I was in your position, I just plopped the baby seat in the front of the Miata and got on with life. We were both quite happy.

Something you won't understand until you unbox the baby seat(s) is just how big they are. Our infant seat with the plop in thing is freaking huge. It is so huge in fact that I have to have it behind the passenger seat with the passenger seat moved up more than 50% in my Saab 9-3 Wagon. They are also not friendly with seats that have much of a bucket to them. The next seat size up fits a lot better, still in rear facing mode. Again, not friendly with buckety seats.

That said, see if there is a GM approved way of installing the baby seat. I cannot imagine you're the first. Otherwise, Porsche has all the stuff you need. Their seats are really nice, but with a little research you should be able to buy nearly the same seat without the Porsche logo for half the price. The key there is the kit with the airbag disable tether thing.

Your bigger issue comes up when you are in that phase of needing basically a truck just to leave the house: baby seat, pack and play, stroller, diaper bag, the other bag you end up taking with toys and diaper bag overflow, and you need room for the piles of gifts people just give you when they are that age.

Infant seats are huge, there's no denying that. And it's way more convenient to install them using a four door car, but here's something to keep in mind. I think most of the newborn clicky-base seats are still rated for safety with the handle in the upright position, even though the package or the markings on the seat itself may indicate that it needs to be locked behind the infant seat (which would eat ANOTHER 3-4 inches of precious front to back room.) You'd have to check the mfgr website for each one to see.

But in general, I would agree with everyone else. Once you get a month or two out (not too early since seats DO have an expiration date), go ahead and buy that 2nd car seat: the rear-facing, non clicky-base one. Install that and practice lifting a 25 pound object in and out of it. It might make that extra Camry in the driveway not seem too ridiculous for 2-3 years.

Similarly, stuff it in the back of your wife's golf R and then both of you take turns sitting in the passenger seat. Chances are, your knees will be eating the dash, again making a more civil car not seem too ridiculous.

As always, YMMV. You might be the type for whom it's totally worth it to do the contortionist thing to get to keep yourself vintage mini or whatever. Haha.