The Kia Soul is a funky-shaped small car that competes with a bevy of other compact vehicles in the US market, including the ord Focus, Honda Civic, Toyota Corolla, Kia Forte, Hyundai Elantra, Chevrolet Cruze, Mazda 3, Dodge Dart, Toyota Prius, Scion xB, and Subaru Crosstrek. The small car market has gotten popular in recent years!

Like the now-discontinued Nissan Cube, the Kia Soul tends to be a polarizing car with its distinctive styling, with folks either loving it or staying far away from it. There are enough families interested in it, however, to make it worth considering as a means of city / urban transportation with little ones. I made it my goal to figure out just how many different car seat combinations I could get into my neighbor’s Soul (pun intended).

Before looking into car seat combinations, though, I always like to review the basics of car seat safety. For me, that starts with rear-facing. Ideally, you’ll want to rear-face as long as possible (ideally until 4!), and then forward-face as long as possible (ideally until 8!), and then booster until a regular belt fits your child (which typically happens between 10 and 12). These guidelines keep your kids in the safest positions for the longest amounts of time, which is a major factor in injury prevention.

However, for this information to be helpful, you need to know if a particular car seat will fit in your particular vehicle. Here are my experiences fitting a range of seats inside various years of the Kia Soul. I’ll periodically update each page as I try more seats in more positions.

You can access the complete 3 across guide for every vehicle here and the complete list of recommended seats here. Canadians can find recommended car seats here. 3 across car seat images are courtesy of Wikipedia.

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.