The Nissan Sentra (known as the Nissan Sylphy abroad) is one of the best-selling small cars in the United States, only outsold by the Toyota Corolla, Honda Civic, Hyundai Elantra, and Ford Focus. It competes with those cars and many more in the compact car market, including the Kia Soul, Kia Forte, Dodge Dart, Chevrolet Cruze, Mazda 3, Toyota Prius, Scion xB, and Subaru Crosstrek. The Sentra holds its own with good reliability and affordability, as well as a full range of up to date safety features, including good small overlap and moderate overlap front crash scores, good side impact and roof scores, and side airbags and ESC. In other words, it’s a great example of a safe small car on the market today.
With that in mind, I wanted to find out how good of a job the Sentra did when it came to installing 3 car seats across the back seat, whether with seat belts or with the LATCH system. The Sentra is a good family vehicle for families of 3, 4, or even 5 if you’re willing to sit a bit more closely together, so I was excited to look for 3 across combinations that would work. Before digging into what I found, however, let’s look at when it’s a good idea to use infant seats, convertibles, combination seats, and boosters, and why.
For me, car seat safety starts with rear-facing your kids as long as you can (ideally until 4!). That’s the safest position and is worth doing as long as possible before forward-facing your little ones in harnessed convertible or combination seats (ideally until 8!). Once they outgrow their harnessed seats, I suggest keeping children in high-back boosters until they’re physically and psychologically ready to use adult seat belt systems (which typically happens between 10 and 12). The goal is to keep kids as safely restrained for as long as possible, as it’s far too late to do anything for your child’s safety in the moment before a collision.
Keeping these ideas in mind, I set to work to find which infant, convertible, combination, and booster seats would work best in 3 across combinations in the Nissan Sentra. I found several good options and a few great ones. If you find the list helpful when shopping for car seats, you can shop through my Amazon link below. I’ll add more seats as I test them over time.
You can access the complete 3 across guide for every vehicle here and the complete list of recommended seats here. The Canadian car seat guide is here. 3 across car seat images are courtesy of Wikipedia.
2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 Nissan Sentra (B17)
Guaranteed 3 across installations:
Clek Fllo (x3).
Clek Foonf (x3).
Chicco KeyFit 30 (x3).
Diono Radian RXT (x3).
Diono Radian R120 (x3).
Diono Radian R100 (x3).
Combi Coccoro (x3).
Clek Fllo, Diono Radian / RXT, Diono Radian / RXT.
Chicco KeyFit 30, Clek Fllo, Chicco KeyFit 30.
Tips and Tricks:
The current generation of the Nissan Sentra is 182 inches long and just over 69 inches wide, which places it on the narrower end of compact / small cars available today in the US (despite the EPA rating it as a “midsize” car). What this means is that your interior space will limit the range of car seats you can install in the Sentra, although you’ll still be able to choose between a few as long as they’re narrow ones.
Given the somewhat shorter length of the Sentra, you will need to watch your front-to-back space when dealing with tall seats. A good idea I frequently recommend is to use your seat belts instead of your LATCH anchors to make the most of that side-to-side space.
If you’re using the Radians, you’ll definitely want to make use of the angle adjuster to get as much extra room between the car seat and the vehicle’s front seats as possible; this will give you extra leg room as a driver or front seat passenger.
2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 Nissan Sentra (B16)
Guaranteed 3 across installations:
Clek Fllo (x3).
Clek Foonf (x3).
Diono Radian RXT (x3).
Diono Radian R120 (x3).
Diono Radian R100 (x3).
Combi Coccoro (x3).
Clek Fllo, Diono Radian / RXT, Diono Radian / RXT.
Chicco KeyFit 30, Clek Fllo, Chicco KeyFit 30.
Tips and Tricks:
The 2007-2012 generation of the Nissan Sentra is 182 inches long and just over 70 inches wide, which means it’s actually slightly wider than the generation that comes after it. As a result, any car seats that fit into the succeeding generation will also fit into this generation, and will likely give you a little less trouble to install.
Given the somewhat shorter length of the Sentra, you will need to watch your front-to-back space when dealing with tall seats. A good idea I frequently recommend is to use your seat belts instead of your LATCH anchors to make the most of that side-to-side space.
If you’re using the Radians, you’ll definitely want to make use of the angle adjuster to get as much extra room between the car seat and the vehicle’s front seats as possible; this will give you extra leg room as a driver or front seat passenger.
2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Nissan Sentra (B15)
Guaranteed 3 across installations:
Clek Fllo (x3).
Clek Foonf (x3).
Diono Radian RXT (x3).
Diono Radian R120 (x3).
Diono Radian R100 (x3).
Combi Coccoro (x3).
Clek Fllo, Diono Radian / RXT, Diono Radian / RXT.
Tips and Tricks:
The 2000-2006 generation of the Nissan Sentra is slightly more than 177 inches long and just over 67 inches wide, which means going to be quite difficult to fit any car seats into it, even though you’ll still have good luck with the narrowest seats on the market (the ones I shared above).
Given the short length of the Sentra, you will need to watch your front-to-back space when dealing with tall seats. A good idea I frequently recommend is to use your seat belts instead of your LATCH anchors to make the most of that side-to-side space.
If you’re using the Radians, you’ll definitely want to make use of the angle adjuster to get as much extra room between the car seat and the vehicle’s front seats as possible; this will give you extra leg room as a driver or front seat passenger.
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If you find the information on car safety, recommended car seats, and car seat reviews on this car seat blog helpful, you can shop through this Amazon link for any purchases, car seat-related or not. Canadians can shop through this link for Canadian purchases.