Recommendations for small car to fit 2 ERF car seats

[BoringAF19]

Totally out of my depth here and I’m driving myself mental. We went to a car dealership last week to look at cars but they absolutely weren’t interested in helping me find a car instead just asking if we’d seen one online and left us to it so we left.

I need to downsize my car my DH has the family car so I need something cheap to run. I do about 3k miles a year but can’t be without a car. Budget is up to £11k for a 19/20 plate. I need to be able to fit 2 erf car seats in the back which seems to be the issue trying to find a car. We have Joie stages car seats which I’m not prepared to change because we’ve already spent a fortune on car seats.

Does anyone have experience with car seats in any of these cars?

Skoda Fabia
New shape corsa
Ford Fiesta
Ford Focus
Vauxhall Astra
any other recommendations?

any help would be appreciated

In the erf car seat groups, they all recommend the Honda jazz for having lots of space inside and being good for rear facing seats..

But whenever I've been car hunting, I've just asked to look inside a car , then fitted my seats in.

I got two britax maxways in my Fabia fine and a driver with 33 inch inside leg was ok

@Mairzydotes thank you so much, tbh I was hoping it would be as easy as that and I’d just get the car seat in and all would be good but looking online there seems to be loads of comments about car seats not fitting and guaranteed that would be the case with me 🙈

@MyPenIsHuge I did see online the Britax Maxway is quite a good option but we have 4x Joie stages car seats (2 in each car purely for convenience) so we’ve spent a fortune on car seats already 🙈 although that may be the way forward

I had a hyundai i20 which fitted a minikid 2 in the back behind the passenger. I suspect it would have fitted behind the drivers seat for me, 5"5, but not for a taller person.

Just in case you weren't aware, a gap of I think 55cm? is required to be between the child's head and front of next seat for any FF car seat.

Hyundai i10

I’d go for a newer shape KA, 19 or 69 plate. Theyre basically a fiesta on the inside but much cheaper to insure. They have isofix and 5 door

I would go test drive a few and see if you like them. Then fit the seats before buying. We put our axkid minkid in the car before buying and they didn't seem to care and that's more of a pain then the joie to fit.

The Joie stages seat is known for taking up a large amount of space because of the recline it has to be on for rear facing and most ERF seat with lower tethers fit a much smaller space and have more leg space for the child as they are more upright.

I have a 2018 Vauxhall Astra 5 door. Used it to rearface my now 8 year old and rearface my 2.5 year old. Toddler is forward facing due to bad reflux.

Forgot add we used AxKid Minikid for 8 year old at age 4 and toddler used Joie tilt from birth.