Car seat but no car - advice please!

[fleacircus]

I'm currently pg with my first baby and getting confused about this. We don't have a car and don't want one, living near excellent public transport. But we often hire a car for weekends, holidays etc, and I'd feel safer having my own seat than relying on the rental companies. But are they all reliant on those surefix type systems? Because I'll need something that's compatible with different cars and that can be safely attached using just the seatbelt rather than a semi-permanent base.

I know it's a boring question but I'm really confused, what do other car-less families do?

just buy a standard seat without a base- but bear in mind that no seat is guaranteed to fit every car!

Look at the graco autobaby, britax cosy tot and the maxi cosi cabrio

We do the same as you but have our own car seats. we know their history - ie they are safe. Ours doesn't have a base and we checked it fitted in the car we normally hire (ie the cheaper ones).

When we were carless we used the Britax Rockatot
It fitted every car we used apart from a Peugeot Coupe

The place where we have bought our seats from has a book that tells you whether the seat is suitable for the car you have - if you can find a similar shop, and know what sort of cars you normally hire, this might help.

Your prob best off going into Mothercare and asking for their advice as thats what I did. They have access to a database which shows what car seats are compatible with different cars so they should be able to recommend a suitable "multi purpose" one! I ended up having a Fisher Price one ordered for me from Mothercare as it has 2 different ways to attach it to the car using the seat belt and so can be used in most cars...

Surely it's no different from most of us who have a car but go out with friends or relations in a different one?

I've just had a quick look in the summer Argos book and there's a quick guide on p1484 giving various helpline numbers to check that a seat will be ok for a particular car.

If Argos do it then I'm sure you'll get the same info from Mothercare or Halfords.

Thanks - that's useful. I'll ask in the shop when we're actually buying; the Britax sounds like a good bet.

Thanks all for replying - not the most interesting of subjects for you all to spend time thinking about so I do appreciate it!

Ask the shop which seat is the easiest to fit correctly. The most popular models will be easy to fit and fit correctly in the largest variety of cars.