Thursday, February 26, 2015

2015 Ford F-150: Car Seat Check

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The redesigned 2015 Ford F-150 is now at dealerships and is quickly becoming one of the fastest-selling vehicles on the market. This full-size pickup truck has an aluminum body and a redesigned interior that ekes out a bit more passenger space in the cabin. Our test truck, a SuperCrew cab, easily fit our three child-safety seats, joining the 2015 Ram 1500 in family-hauling capabilities.

How many car seats fit in the second row? Three

More Car Seat Checks

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What We Like

  • The F-150 has two sets of lower Latch anchors in the outboard rear seats. In our test truck's SuperCrew cab, there are three tether anchor straps behind the head restraints; this setup is also found in the F-150 SuperCab. In the regular cab, there are two tether anchor straps.
  • The tether loops are easy to use if parents read the owner's manual before installing a forward-facing car seat. The tether strap is routed through the tether loop directly behind the car seat and then hooked onto the adjacent tether loop before tightening the strap. This is an extra but important step that parents need to be aware of.
  • Both the rear-facing infant and convertible car seats installed easily, thanks to exposed lower Latch anchors. There was no need to move the front passenger seat forward to accommodate either car seat.
  • The forward-facing convertible also fit easily.
  • The booster seat fit well on the F-150's wide, flat rear bench.

What We Don't

  • One of the three rear seat belt buckles was on a floppy base, which can be difficult for young children to use on their own.
  • Our test truck didn't have running boards, which made it quite difficult to climb into the F-150. Without running boards, kids will have a tough time getting in on their own, meaning parents will be lifting their little and not-so-little ones in and out of the cab.

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Grading Scale

A: Plenty of room for the car seat and the child; doesn't impact driver or front-passenger legroom. Easy to find and connect to Latch and tether anchors. No fit issues involving head restraint or seat contouring. Easy access to the third row.

B: Plenty of room. One fit or connection issue. Some problems accessing third row when available.

C: Marginal room. Two fit or connection issues. Difficult to access third row when available.

D: Insufficient room. Two or more fit or connection issues.

F: Does not fit or is unsafe.

About Cars.com's Car Seat Checks

Editors Jennifer Geiger and Jennifer Newman are certified child safety seat installation technicians.

For the Car Seat Check, we use a Graco SnugRide Classic Connect 30 infant-safety seat, a Britax Marathon convertible seat and Graco TurboBooster seat. The front seats are adjusted for a 6-foot driver and a 5-foot-8 passenger. The three child seats are installed in the second row. The booster seat sits behind the driver's seat, and the infant and convertible seats are installed behind the front passenger seat.

We also install the forward-facing convertible in the second row's middle seat with the booster and infant seat in the outboard seats to see if three car seats will fit; a child sitting in the booster seat must be able to reach the seat belt buckle. If there's a third row, we install the booster seat and a forward-facing convertible. To learn more about how we conduct our Car Seat Checks, go here.

Parents should also remember that they can use the Latch system or a seat belt to install a car seat, and that Latch anchors have a weight limit of 65 pounds, including the weight of the child and the weight of the seat itself.

Cars.com photos by Evan Sears



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