[quote=flu]Trust me. The seat 7 is a gimmick… Find anyone that owns an acura mdx or similar that has a third row, and ask them how often they use the third row and I’d be surprised if anyone uses them in a meaningful way. If your wife wants 7 seats, you’ll be better served with a minivan or with a real, full size SUV….
Here’s the issue. If you have a kid with a kid car seat. You would probably end up putting the car seat in the second row. Because putting it in the 3rd row would limit your trunk space. The moment you put the car seat in the second row, you would probably then make the decision to put the car seat as far away from the side curtain airbags as much as possible. That would mean putting the car seat in the middle.
And finally, the moment you put the car seat in the middle, you can’t fold down the second row seat to get into the third row, making it a real PITA to get into the third row..And anyone who is asked to sit in the third row is already not going to be thrilled about it…
So most likely, the third row will always stay stored away (with the extra added weight you carry)…
I refuse to put anyone in the third row…Because if anyone rear ended me, you’re pretty much sentencing the person/people sitting in the third row to paralysis or worse… The point of an bigger car is safer crumple zone. Anyone sitting in a third row won’t have any room should you get rear ended.[/quote]
I totally agree. I have a MDX and the only time I use the 3rd row is when we wanted to go out with a couple of people and they don’t want to drive (take 2 cars). Most of the time, the 3rd row stay stowed away. The leg room in the 3rd row is so horrible anyways, that only people shorter than 5′ can fit in there comfortably. The thing about those SUV that have 3rd row though, is that their “trunk” tend to be larger than the ones with only 2 rows. The Honda Pilot 3rd row is much better than the MDX 3rd row though.
WRT car seat and access to 3rd row, that’s just poor design on Acura part. The new Infiniti JX will let you slide one seat forward even with a car seat in it, to access the 3rd row. If you have 2 kids, then you don’t really have a choice in putting them in the middle. So they both will be on the side.
To truly seat 7 comfortable, like you, I’d say minivan or a true full size SUV like the Armada/QX/etc.
