Over the years, minivan choices have narrowed to a select few. The automotive twins, the Chrysler Town & Country and Dodge Grand Caravan, are the last minivans offered by the Detroit Three. Recently, a 2010 Town & Country and Grand Caravan came through our offices. They had the same interior layout, with two captain’s chairs in the second row and a three-seat bench in the third row. For the Car Seat Check, we use a rear-facing infant-safety seat, a convertible child-safety seat and a high-back booster seat, all made by Graco. The front seats are adjusted to a comfortable position for a 6-foot driver and a 5-foot-8 passenger. The child seats are installed in the second row and, if available, third row. The booster seat sits behind the driver’s seat, and the infant seat and convertible seats are installed behind the passenger seat. Here’s how the 2010 Town & Country and Grand Caravan scored in MotherProof.com’s Car Seat Check: Latch system: There are two sets of lower Latch anchors in the second-row captain’s chairs. They’re visible to the eye and easy to use. In the third-row bench, a set of lower Latch anchors sits off-center of the middle position. When a child-safety seat is installed using the Latch anchors in the third row, the three-seat bench essentially becomes a two-seater. I can’t say I’m wild about that, especially if you’re using a minivan to haul a bigger family. The exposed tether anchors sit at the base of the seatbacks, which is a long reach.  Booster seat: In the second row, the booster seat fit well in the captain’s chairs after the head restraints were removed, and the seat belt buckles sit in stable bases that are well within a child’s reach. In the third row, the seat bolstering interfered with the booster’s fit. There also were problems with the seat belt buckles in the third row. The buckles were floppy, which are harder for kids to manage, and fell behind or under the booster seat.  Convertible child-safety seat: The exposed Latch anchors made installing both the rear- and forward-facing convertible seat a cinch. I had to remove the head restraint to get a good fit with the forward-facing convertible in the captain’s chairs. Rear-facing infant-safety seat: This was also easy to install in the second row. Do two car seats fit? Yes, in both the second and third rows. Do three car seats fit? Yes, if using both rows. Four car seats will fit into these minivans easily, but five might be difficult unless the three car seats used in the third row are narrow.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 4th, 2010 at 3:01 pm and is filed under auto brochure. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.