We have a 2009 Toyota Yaris 4-door with trunk. The car seats are the amazing Diono Radian RXT convertible car seats. Amazing because they fit 3 across in our compact car. That said there are some down sides to these car seats. I recommend reading the entire instruction booklet before attempting installation, especially if you are not familiar with car seat jargon, e.g., latch installation, harness adjuster, etc. These seats are not designed to snap in and out of an attached base like the Graco seats. Once in the car they stay in the car so there's no easy portable baby carrier. They weigh 24 lbs each. They fold up and are designed to be carried (to use them in a bus or an airplane). They come with a carrying strap and can be carried on one shoulder or like a backpack. They are expensive, $288 on Amazon. But they have a 10 year warranty, are designed for kids 5-120 lbs, and convert from rear-facing to forward facing. Much cheaper than buying a new car and probably the only seat we will have to buy, so a one-time purchase. We won't have to buy another one for front-facing or as a booster.
We began with a quick fit test. We took the Radians out of their boxes and seatbelted them into the back seat of the car. It took two of us to get them in, positioned and seatbelts threaded through each seat. If you have larger hands, you might want to find someone with smaller hands. The path to feed the seatbelt through is similar to the Graco, though very smooth with no rough edges, roomier but still tight. Once we knew they were going to fit we brought them back in one at a time, J attending to adjusting them for newborn infant size and me carting them in and out. This is where the reading through the entire instruction booklet would have come in handy. We're both pretty mechanically inclined but the jargon in the instructions had each of us with a booklet in hand trying to figure out what exactly they were talking about. It really wasn't that complicated after we got the manual for the car out of the glove box to better understand what kind of car restraint system we have and once we got the first carseat adjustments done. I was able to get them strapped back into the car by myself. Our only difficulty with this was the seatbelt attachment can fall out of the path, so I recommend sticking it through as far as possible with one hand and then grasping it with your other and not letting go before you click it into place. Though this means strategically leaning against the ever moving receding seatbelt (I used my knee) while feeding the seatbelt through. There's a nice video on YouTube showing how to install one of the seats into a vehicle. The best part is the suggestion about where to put pressure on the seat while snugging it down.
Here are pictures of the seats in our car.
