2012 Jaguar XF: Car Seat Check

With its relatively low starting price of $53,000, the 2012 Jaguar XF offers a (sort of) wallet-friendly entry into the Jaguar lineup. The XF sedan seats five, but it doesn’t fit three child-safety seats across the backseat.

For the Car Seat Check, we use a Graco SnugRide 30 rear-facing infant-safety seat, a Britax Roundabout convertible child-safety seat and Graco high-back TurboBooster seat.

The front seats are adjusted to a comfortable position 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 seat and convertible seats are installed behind the passenger seat. We also install the infant seat in the second row’s middle seat with the booster and convertible in the outboard seats to see if three car seats will fit. If there’s a third row, we install the booster seat and a forward-facing convertible.

Here’s how the 2012 XF did in Cars.com’s Car Seat Check:

Latch system: The XF’s two sets of lower Latch anchors were difficult to use with larger, rigid Latch connectors on our Britax convertible. The anchors, which are found in the outboard seats, sit behind slits in the leather seats. The slits don’t open wide enough to accommodate the rigid anchors, but we had much better luck using the anchors with the traditional hook-like connectors (photo above) on our infant-safety seat. Three tether anchors are found on the rear shelf behind the head restraints. They sit under plastic covers that flip open.

Booster seat: While there is some seat bolstering in the XF’s backseat, it wasn’t so much that it affected the booster seat’s fit. At first glance, the seat belt buckles seem like they’d be easy for kids to use, but when you push the buckle into the receptor, they sink into the bottom seat cushion.

Convertible seat: Both the forward- and rear-facing convertible fit well in the backseat. We didn’t have to adjust the front passenger’s seat to get it to fit.

Infant-safety seat: This rear-facing seat also fit well in the XF.

How many car seats fit in the second row? Two

Editor’s note: For three car seats — infant-safety seat, convertible and booster seats — to fit in a car, our criterion is that a child sitting in the booster seat must be able to reach the seat belt buckle. Parents should also remember that they can use the Latch system or a seat belt to install a car seat.