Which car would you pick?

[Unregistered]

Hi,
I am currently in the market for a new SUV. I currently drive a Trailblazer, which is nice but we're starting to run out of room. I currently only have one child, but in 2-3 years will have another. We have my niece a lot, plus my mom and/or brother go a lot of places with us. We are considering the following SUVS:

2008 Toyota Highlander
2008 Nissan Pathfinder
2007 Chevy Tahoe
2008 GMC Acadia

We would probably have to place a car seat in third row sometime in the future. Currently DD is RF in a Marathon and my niece is in a Recaro Como FF. Can anyone offer any opinons on the safety of the cars and the reliabilty ratings? Thank you!

[LuvBug03]

here are a couple good places to start
http://www.car-safety.org/carguide.html
http://www.car-safety.org/links.html

Informed for Life if one of my favorite places to go and compare data http://www.informedforlife.org/viewartcl.php?index=24

[firemomof3]

I would look at the Honda Pilot. It has much more room than the other vehicles you mentioned.

[aeormsby]

We have an 07 Saturn Outlook (same as the Acadia). I've been happy with it. It's pretty easy to get 3 seats in the 2nd row (we have the 8 passenger, it aslo comes in a 7 pass with 2nd row captain's chairs). The center seat in the 2nd row can be prohibitive for some seats, I had problems with a Radian & the Frontier doesn't work there. I've been able to get a Snugride, Uptown & Marathon there with little/no problem.

There's tons of room in the back if you're not using the 3rd row, fairly easy access to the 3rd row, I can put any seat on the 40 section and still tumble the 60 section. It was trickier to find 2 seats to work on the 60 section and leave enough room for the 40 section to tumble (MA outboard & Uptown center works). The MA's fit in the 3rd row RF, pretty upright though. Infant seat didn't fit back there with enough recline.

I do sometimes wish it was a little easier to fit seats in the 2nd row center seat, the seatbelt stalk is fixed and gets in the way (really only the Radian & Frontier that I've had issues with so far). There are 2 full Latch (outboard) & tethers for the center seat both 2nd & 3rd row. It also has shoulder strap adjusters for all (I think) positions which I could see coming in handy for carpooling with older (8-12yo) kids. The lap belt seems to fit nice and low, and with the shoulder adjuster it could work in a pinch. (my kids are 1 & 3 so we're no where near needing that yet).

Ann

ETA - we also test drove a Highlander when we were car shopping, it was much smaller. And I didn't like the 2nd row 2 +1 seating thing.