Occasional kid transporter - how inconvenient do I go??

I have 6 children. When my first was born we had a Fiero GT and an Austin Healey 100-6. I had to borrow a car to get my son out of the hospital. Some funny moments occurred later involving the Healey. I also have a Vette. Mine has the deactivation switch and I used it plenty. Our rear facing seat worked just fine. My 2 cents is the child next to you is less distracting than the one behind you. Our 930 was the ultimate kid hauler but they have to be exactly the right age and size. Between 45-48 pounds. The best kid hauler ever? 240 Volvo wagon. The doors opened super wide, and once they graduated to the rear facing seat....heaven. For your needs, I would go 4D 3 series. But I too would keep the vette and deactivate the airbag.

I put one of the infant-carrier (removable) car seats in the passenger seat of my NC Miata when I had it, and it was great. Disable the airbag (there's a keyed switch on the NC) and you're good to go. Once baby #2 came along I needed something that could handle two carseats, so no dice at that point.

What hasn't been mentioned: It's a LOT nicer to be able to look just to your right and see your kiddo, console them, talk to them, compared to trying to do the same for a kid behind you. If you like your current car, don't bother switching, just figure out how to disable the airbag, and get a stroller that folds up small enough you can toss in the trunk (or use one of them strap-the-baby-to-daddy carrier things).

Well, a big congratulations to you and your wife on your new family.

I don't know where you live, but if I tried to drive anywhere with a young child in the front seat, I wouldn't make it very far. I can't convey to you the level of hate that would attract from random strangers. I'm pretty sure people would be blocking me with their cars and phoning the police and social services for emergency response. I would probably be safer leaving five dogs in the car on a 100 degree day. Not that I would even consider that.

We had a SAAB 901 coupe, it was my wife's and she loved it. She sold it for a 4-door Subie within three months after our first was born. I had a Jeep GC. With the Jeep and the big Thule roof box, we had barely enough room to take ourselves and two kids on the road for a week at the beach. The Forester was too small.

There were many, many days when I headed home before all the errands I had planned were done, because I just couldn't face unstrapping and restrapping the kids to get in and out of a store. And that was with the Jeep. Then before I knew it, I was leaving work at 4:30 so I could pick up my kid and two others from swim practice, a pool party, or Brownies. Parenthood is one long car pool of other people's kiddies. I can find no other explanation for the enduring success of the minivan.

I still have the Jeep as the "back up" kid car only now that means a kid is driving it. And I'm still finding the occasional mini-pretzel or Cheerio when it migrates its way out of some corner of the upholstery.

I don't know what parenthood will be like for you, but for me, it was an un-envisionable change in most aspects of my life. It will probably be at least three months before you need two baby-capable cars in your new larger family. Maybe wait a bit and see what you think.

Personally I think the "easy" button for men and women in your situation is the M3 sedan. The three-pedal version does not interfere with kid management in stop-and-go traffic. There is a stretch in the elementary school period where you will have intrusive thoughts about third row seating being a nagging imperative, but that will pass.

Lots of great ideas here, thanks everybody. Again, we'll use my wife's vehicle the majority of the time but I'm sure there will be situations occasionally where I need to take the kid somewhere and she's not home. I work random shifts, nights weekends holidays etc and she has a really flexible job so our life is less structured than most.

If we end up with more kids down the line we'll get a bigger vehicle but it's overkill now. My parents have a Hyundai Santa Fe that's pretty spacious we could borrow for longer road trips although I don't see that happening in the next few years. I need to investigate the manual airbag switch option for the C6, there may be an aftermarket solution. I'd rather not sell it right away as I haven't even had it a year and I have done a fair amount of work on it, have two sets of nearly new tires, etc.

Keep the Vette and buy something economical for a few grand with 4 doors. Maybe ls400 or something. Use it for a year or so whenever you have to haul the baby then sell it when they upgrade to forward facing seat and smaller stroller. I don't see where you can fit a carseat, diaper bag, and a stroller in a 911.

With one kid, we got by with a sedan and a Miata. With two kids our household fleet became a SUV, sedan and Miata. Now with more kids our daily drivers are a minivan and a hatchback... but I plan to replace my hatch with a 2+2 when its lease is up.

I will also add this: the manual is not a problem with the kid in the car. Think about it - you really need to be concentrating on driving even if the kiddo is screaming. Exactly when an auto would lull you into turning around and doing something with the kid while in motion is when you need to use all available focus on what's in front of you. If you absolutely have to turn around and do something - pull over and stop. Manual vs Auto makes no difference if you're stopped.

If it's just yourself and the baby, and you can find a way to use a key for the front airbag lockout, I don't see a problem with the Corvette. Plus, you can carry a lot of baby gear in the hatchback.

But if you need to carry the whole family around, it won't work even in a pinch. I tried using an E36 convertible for this, and it would work for two adults and a baby, but we had to flip the passenger seat forward to accommodate a rear facing child seat. Carrying two adults and two child seats in the car wouldn't be possible unless the adults were considerably shorter. So I ended up scaling up to a sedan with some sporting pretentions, in my case a Buick Regal with the supercharged 3800 - although you seem to be able to fit a bit more into the budget. Some of my problems may be from having to jam the front seat almost all the way back, though.

The C6 has a lot of hatch space so I'd be fine for baby gear. Again this would be for very occasional use. I'm not finding any switches to manually disable the airbag though and the weight sensor strategy seems a little sketchy. I would love to keep the Corvette and add a more convenient car for both winter and kids but the fleet size has been capped.

I'm loving the range of opinions from "it's great to have your kid next to you" to "get a big sedan". Clear as mud, many ways to skin a cat, etc.

I think for one kid, the clear answer is a Hellcat or Demon Charger. Beyond that, an SRT or other hot version of the Jeep.

In reply to turtl631:

AhhhhhC6. So, mine is a c5 and has a disable switch in the console. Yours does not have such a switch I hear. I'm sure where there's a will, there's a way, but your seat sensor is the only deactivation route, according to the interwebs. There has to be a trigger from that sensor, but research required. I really dislike all the bells and whistles most times. Roll up windows are ok by me.

turtl631 wrote: I'm loving the range of opinions from "it's great to have your kid next to you" to "get a big sedan". Clear as mud, many ways to skin a cat, etc.

Statistically, the back seat is a much safer place than the front.

The problem with a manual airbag disable switch is that you need to remember to use it, and if it's only occasional use then it's easy to forget. The weight-based ones typically have a light on the dash to notify you of if it's on or not, so you're not just blindly assuming it will work.

With my first batch of kids I went out and got a Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham. Best dad car ever. Put kids in back on any type of car seat and they could be killing each other and it was as if they were in a different zip code. I also came to really like the concept of riding around on my living room sofa sitting in a space that was better appointed than my living room. Oh and the trunk is Huge. Strollers bags toys diapers will fit with room to spare.

Another quick tip is put a kid "go bag" in each car with the kid essential's. It will quickly break the urge to bring huge amounts of kid stuff with you. Diapers, wipes a change of close a spare binky and one toy.

Former car seat tech here. If you disable the passenger's airbag, I think the C6 is totally viable as an occasional baby-hauler.

Do you own research on front vs. rear seat safety, and also the other compromises people make. Studies are never directly comparable so I won't throw out numbers, but I'm convinced my 4 year old is safer rear-facing in the front seat of my Miata (sun-cancer risk aside) than she would be forward-facing in the back of our usual kid-hauler.

Just making sure the seat is installed correctly and the kid is installed correctly in the seat would put you way ahead of average. Big advances in crash safety were made in the last few decades. No idea how to prove it with data, but I might prefer the front of a C6 to the back of a decade-older E36 etc.

A lot of people fixate on one well-publicized aspect of the holistic safety picture and totally ignore weaker links. So we end up with forward-facing 1 year olds in brand-new 8000lb SUVs, expensive Britax car seats not using the top tether, and awd vehicles on bald all-seasons. Get the rest right, and the front vs. back seat can be a relatively minor factor. Normal practice in Sweden, with one of the lowest child fatality rates, is to put infants in the front passenger's seat.

You can always be in a safer car. You can also always stay home. It's a statistics game, and a question of what you're comfortable with.

Plus when they're big enough for a booster seat, it's a great feeling to have your kid shift with her left hand as you clutch.

But if you're just looking for an excuse to get a new car, we're here to enable. Remember that there's a wide range of car seats beyond what's on the shelf at Walmart, and there are some harder-to-find seats that fit better in the backs of interesting vehicles. The car seat is not a fixed variable. I see a lot of dumb people buying new cars because the expired car seat they got at a garage sale was too big.

As an aside, I personally don't really trust the seat weight sensor for regular use. If you can't find someone to officially disable the bag, there are unofficial ways worth hinting at on the GRM board but not on most others.