I'm thinking of buying an Audi A5 coupe. The major thing holding me back is that my wife and I are probably going to start having children in the next couple years. How hard is it to get car seats in and out of the back of the A5? I have absolutely zero experience with car seats and have never owned a coupe. Any advice or experiences would be appreciated!

i had 6 people in my car last night. so it can be done... but pulling anything out of the back, like a child, would be difficult. Especially if something were to happen and you needed to get them out quickly.

i would be curious if you could get a child seat back there..

i had the same decision to make when i bought my s5 last month. the back seat does have the tie downs for a child seat. they have the units these days where a base stays locked in the car and the carrier itself comes completely out, greatly simplifying the process. either way, my wife drives a q7 and i figured, for the amount of times i would actually have to haul a kid around (maybe 3-4 a month if that), i could deal with the inconvenience. if your second car if more family friendly, i say go for it.

my two cents...

did it would be a pain. I don't think you would have any problem with forward facing or booster seats though.

I have two kids in Britax forward facing and don't think it will be a problem.

In your situation though I would probably say you should pass since you'll need rear facing.

I went through the same debate with myself before I ordered my A5. My current car is a 1997 Jetta, which makes up in practicality what it lacks in sexiness. My wife has a VW Eos, and so it became obvious that losing the Jetta for an A5 meant we'd have two impractical two-doors. That normally wouldn't bother me, until I had a few co-workers and other nosy people weigh in with their opinions on the matter. They insisted that we'd be sorry when we had kids (presumably in the next couple of years). But since these are the same people who think that having a single infant is reason to buy the biggest SUV/minivan they can get, I was happy to ignore them.

But it started gnawing away in the back of my mind. I started to worry about being "stuck" with two cars in the house that are both little more than toys, and good for only two-person transportation (the occasional four-person lunch run notwithstanding). But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I shouldn't be too quick to base such a decision on a life situation that doesn't even exist yet!

I'm 28 now. If I was making some decision like this when I was, say, 25, I would have been pretty sure we'd have kids by now. And I would have been wrong. Just the same, I don't know what my situation will be in two, three, or four years. If I buy a grocery-getter now in anticipation of a future reality, and plans change, I'll regret it. I decided it's better to enjoy the two income, no kids situation we have, and make the most of it. If that permits us to have fun cars that aren't good for anything but fun...so be it.

So, I decided that I'd rather just deal with any eventual inconveniences later and enjoy myself in the meantime by getting what I really want. If that inconvenience takes the form of miserable crawling into the back struggling with a rear-facing seat for a year, so be it. If instead that's too much, and my inconvenience takes the form of getting a cheap, practical third car for that same time period, so be it. I thought a good bit about it, and I decided that if I can't afford a cheap (probably used) four-door a few years down the road to haul the offspring around in, I can't really afford the A5.

Is styling really so important to you that it's worth the body contortion required to fit thru the gap between the front seat & the door panel every time you put your kid in there, and then again to get the kid out?

Baby seat in the back of any coupe makes no logical sense at all, at least to me.

it will certainly be a pain to load the children in the back seat of a coupe, but not impossible. Also, remember with kids comes their stuff. If you plan to travel overnight, you'll need room for the kid gear (pack-N-play, swing, stroller, etc.).

again, it's all about choices and the choice is whether you want an A5 and are willing to deal with the side effects.

In my opinion, you can probably swing an A5 without too much trouble with one kid. But with two kids, you'll probably get annoyed trying to get them in the back seat.

Bring a rear-facing car seat (borrow one if you don't have one) to the dealer and install it in the A5 and see how it fits. It may not even fit. Or it may be easy as pie. Let us know what you find out.

I thought a lot about this when my kids were small and decided that it was just not worth it. Now, however, they are 8 and 6 and are able to climb into the back quite easily and attach their own seatbelts. That made the decision to go for the A5 much easier.

Now I just have to break my 6 year old of the habit of crawling into the back via the center armrest.

pags