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Vehicle Suggestions?
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Hey Ya’ll,
The (2nd) transmission on our Honda Odyssey just bit the dust. Well, about 3 weeks ago, actually- we were on our way out of town for a family reunion. 3:30 in the morning. Got about an hour out and bam! No transmission. Awwww, poor LillyLou!
Anyway… we are now obviously looking for another vehicle, and are not interested in another Odyssey. We have 3 children, all in car seats, and are expecting our 4th in January. So, do you have suggestions for vehicles that have worked for your growing families, especially with car seats? We’re finding that 7 seaters really only hold 3-4 car seats comfortably, so we need something that actually will hold 4 children in car seats, and preferably with some room to spare. Tall order, huh? OH, and we will be buying used…quite used, so things like Ford Flex aren’t in the cards. Anyone have experience with Tohoes, Suburbans, or Astros? How’d those work? And since we don’t anticipate being done, we’ve considered a 10 passenger van…thoughts? Any other suggestions appreciated as well.
(Hope this topic isn’t somehow against the rules. If so, let me know -preferably by PM-I have a hard time with public correction-character flaw of mine, and I’ll remove the post)
Thanks everyone!
LillyLou
Not sure what you have…
but we have done 2 booster seats in the back, 1 front carseat in the middle, and 1 baby carseat in the middle in a Dodge Grand Caravan.
We had previously had 2 front seats in the back, a baby carseat in the middle, and occasionally a boostar seat (or an adult) in the other middle seat… also in a Grand Caravan (older one). that one had bucket middle seats. The thing with that one was we had to contact Dodge to get the tetherstrap bolts added for the back as it only had 1 in the back (in the middle spot.) Some of the people I talked to at dodge said they couldn’t have more… I think I had to talk to at least one person at the national call center. It was like a little strap that hooked underneath to the frame of the actual car seat (ie, the big seat that is part of the car…). Took about 2 minutes to install, and it was all done free. We occasionally had someone stuffed in between the 2 car seats in the back (same on the newer one…) but it isn’t comfortable!
My suggestion would be a Savanna passenger van with extended cargo area. We did a yukon extended about 5 years ago and with 5 kids and 1 on the way (2 car seats and 1 booster seat now) it is too small. My friend with 5 (hers happen to all be teenagers now has a Savanna and it is even plenty of room for traveling when they have to pack alot for camping etc.
Suzukimom: Thanks for that suggestion, we’ll put Caravans on the list of possible minivans. As far as our carseats, we have one in a high back booster, one in a Safety1st Convertable seat (still using 5 point harness) and one in a Recaro (a lot like a Britax, so pretty big), and the new baby will also have a Recaro. I gues the *problem* is that we don’t used the carrier style seats for our babies, so the rear facing seats we use stay put, making it harder to get everyone out since we don’t move the baby’s seat…clear as mud? LOL Does the Caravan have 2 captains seats in the middle, or does it have 2 bench seats for the middle and “back-back”, as we call it?
Laurap: We have actually looked at the Savannas, although not in person. Do you recall if your friend’s Savanna has self contained shoulder straps for each back seat? In other words, do the shoulder straps originate from the seat itself, or are they connected to the van’s ceiling near the side of the van? Again, because of car seats, the shoulder straps have to be self contained in the seat, or else you have to weave through seat belts to get to the back seats. We’ve seen some vans that have them self contained and some that don’t, and I’m wondering if it depends on manufacturer, model, and or year (?)
Thanks, Ladies!
We’ve actually enjoyed our Honda Odyssey and used it up until our 5th child. Once we had our 5th we were really excited to find a GMC Safari Extended version (it’s the same as the Chevy Astro) that seats 8. However, it is pretty tight with the car seats but they do fit: we have two of the 5 point harness car seats, one high-back booster, and two boosters with one more available seat (that my children keep reminding me will seat another baby:) Although it’s tight, it’s worth not moving up to the 10 passenger vans yet to save on gas money. Our van still gets about 18 mpg, compared to the 9-12 mpg of 10 or 15 passengers. Our van was a 1993 so it was less than 2500.00 and is working out great!
Well, we didn’t use the carrier type baby carseat either….
ok, with our 2002 Grand Caravan, the middle seats were bucket seats. We weren’t able to Tip the one with the rear facing carseat, but could flip it when we had a front facing chair because it used the LATCH system…. it didn’t flip quite as far mind you, but enough. There were occasions that we had people get to the back seats by entereing the front seat and walking through the middle. (we didn’t have one of those organizer things in the middle…) – mainly if the middle seats had kids already strapped in. We had that car from 2005 to 2010, so we had a combination of seats. Note that the back seat wasn’t wide enough to have 3 car seats of any combination that we had in the very back… it would have ben nice if it could have!
We got the 2010 Grand Caravan last year after our 2002 was written off in an accident (not our fault…). There are various options for seats – we got the cheapest. So the middle seat is a bench seat, and the back is stow-and-go (1/3 / 2/3). We bought it the day before our 4th was born. Her rear-facing seat is in the middle on the bench, and the preschooler is in a forward facing (harness) seat beside her. That fills the bench. Originally the 2 older kids were in the smaller boosters in the back seat, with a space inbetween them. But we could have fit 2 of the forward facing seats back there, with a bit of room between too… I don’t remember what combination of latch system / teather straps is back there though. The 2 older are out of boosters now. We often have 3 kids in the back (when we have our grandson with us…) – with no boosters.
For seatbelts in the back… the 2002 caravan had a middle lap-belt only. For the 2010 grand caravan, it has a seatbelt from the roof for the middle. Also for the bench in the 2010 grand caravan, on the one side the seatbelt is from the side, not the bench… so it is a bit wierd on the side that is far from the wall…. it isn’t an issue for us as the baby carseat uses latch so the seatbelt isn’t used.
Once our youngest is ready to face forward, she will move to our forward facing seat, and our preschooler will move to a small booster… and will probably move to the back seat, haven’t decided on that yet….
Thanks Amama5. We liked our Odyssey too, just don’t want to risk the faulty transmissions again-apparently it’s an ongoing issue with the year range we would be looking at.
I’m glad to know that you can comfortably fit 5 car seats in the Safari though, that gives us another option. I drove a friend’s Astro the other day, and was happy to see how much room there was (we fit 3 w/o carseats and 3 with car seats in the two back seats for that trip), and I really like the way the back opens up with the three doors. We’ve just had a hard time finding them for sale around here. I’ll have to see if I can locate a Safari…
LillyLou
Suzukimom: I got about 1/2 way through your post and started thinking “I’m gonna have to draw myself a picture to be able to follow this” then started laughing because it seems like we’re in a perpetual state of “musical chairs” with these growing kids, and adding more, to boot! How funny. Thanks for the details though, it does help. I hadn’t even thought about the latch advantage-our last van was a 2000, so it was pre-latch. That will make a difference though with the hanging seat-belt issue if we get a latch equipped vehicle. Thanks!
We used a Ford Windstar until last fall and had 2 in boosters, 2 in carseats, plus big sister. It was okay, but a pain to get kids in and out.
Now we’ve got a Ford E-350 XLT, which is a 12 passenger van. We have 6 children with #7 on the way. It seats 10 in the rear (3 bench seats – 3 belts, 3 belts, 4 belts). So we have baby (rear facing carseat) plus one sister in booster seat on the first row, 2nd row is 2 year old in forward facing carseat and one brother in booster seat, 3rd row is 3yo in forward facing carseat and big sister age 10. That gives us 4 seatbelts still open not counting driver and passenger.
In the 2nd and 3rd row the older children seatbelt younger into their carseat.
When baby 7 is born we’ll shift my 5yo girl to the rear with big sis and one brother, the current baby will barely be into a forward facing seat on front bench, with new baby taking his rear facing carseat.
I love the van. The only thing we had to do when we bought it used was buy running boards so the kids could get in the van (it’s tall). It’s got room for a double stroller in the rear plus groceries, and the bench seats are tall enough groceries even fit underneath those. However, gas mileage isn’t great. That’s true of anything big though.
Good luck!
LillyLou, we usually find all our cars by http://www.autotrader.com. You can specify the kind you want and how far you want to drive to get one. We were actually willing to drive a couple of hours to get one of the vans so we didn’t have to go up to the gas guzzlers yet:) Maybe they would have one around you? Also don’t forget to look at the other model, the Chevy Astro which comes in 5 seats or 8 seats I believe. So either the Safari or Astro would work. Best wishes!
Tristan, I have to admit that I’d love your 10 passenger van! Our van is big enough for the “current” family… but doesn’t work with our “extended” family. With all our family in, we have room for our grandson. If for some reason we have to drive our granddaughter somewhere, we either have to leave the preschooler at home, or leave one of the other kids at home and put the preschooler in our little booster seat we keep in the trunk. (obviously an adult is staying home with them!) Lets see, if we had almost Everyone… that would be 4 adults and 6 kids (3 in some sort of child-seat)… so it would probably work, but a little tight… If my step-son that lives out of town was with us though it still wouldn’t work.
On the other hand… they would probably want us to drive them around a lot more (my 2 step-daughters and the grandkids don’t have a car…)… at least right now I can say “sorry – no-one to watch the kids!)
Aw Lillylou, I am so sorry for your vehicle troubles! I too have an odyssey (98 model) and we are having transmission troubles. Thankfully I am married to a honda whiz due to his incessant “tricking out” of Hondas when he was a teenager and he’s just going to replace it himself with one from Japan when it finally gives out.
I have a friend who drives used Ford Windstars. When they sell one, they buy another just like it! I’m not sure about the seating allowances (they just have 4), but to me that says alot about customer satisfaction. I can’t offer any more advice than that though, since we are a Honda family!
15 passenger van all the way. We have a 2003 Chevrolet 3500. We took out the back seat and can still seat 11 (we’ll be filling up every one of those seats come January, Lord willing!), with plenty of room in the back. Big on space, bad on gas – but that’s life with a large family 🙂
My only complaint about the van is that the air conditioning is kaput. Other than that, it is great!
Thanks for all the suggestions. I’ve done pretty well the last 3 weeks; I thought I’d go stir crazy by now, but haven’t. I am starting to get a little discouraged though over things like not being able to do my own grocery shopping (DH has been doing it for me-he has a little truck-standard- that, no matter how hard I try, I CANNOT learn to drive). I’m also discouraged by the prices I’m seeing…but Jehovah Jireh always provides, right? We’ll find something in our price range, I’m sure. And now I have lots of suggestions to consider. Although we’ll only have 4 come January, we are considering a larger vehicle for these reasons: we don’t have a lot of mandatory driving to do, so that helps with the fuel economy; we plan on having more children, and would like to keep from getting a new car with every child; we like to camp-which requires gear-and for 6+ people, that’s quite a bit of gear to haul. I think we’d probably go for a 12 passenger, but we have looked at the Chevys and GMCs so it’s nice to hear that you like yours, houseofchaos.
I reallly appreciate you all taking the time to comment on this seemingly trivial post, but it has been most helpful
We have actually discussed the possibility of getting a bigger-than-normal van next time around. We have a Dodge Grand Caravan right now, with 2 in boosters, 1 in a booster with the tall back, and 1 in a forward-facing carseat. 1 more kid, and we are going to be pushing it in the back, even if we put our oldest just on the seat, no booster. So if you’re planning on still having more children, keep that in mind when you’re searching. We had looked into the possibility of a passenger van, the kind they use for airports, hotels, or the like. Maybe like a mini-bus type thing? Or a whole school bus….. LOL My dad suggested a used limo. 😛 Oy…. What would our neighbors think if we came home with a limo or a school bus??? ROFL
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