2014 Chevrolet Malibu: Car Seat Check

Chevrolet continues to tinker with the Malibu for 2014. After a redesign for the 2013 model year that didn’t sit well with consumers, Chevy refreshed the midsize sedan with a larger grille and revised front and rear seats. Despite the changes, we found that most of our child-safety seats fit well in the 2014 Malibu.

How many car seats fit in the second row? Two

What We Like

• The Malibu has two sets of lower Latch anchors in the outboard seats and there’s an additional anchor in the middle seating position. All the anchors are easy to use. The five Latch anchors allow parents to install a child-safety seat with Latch anchors in the middle position. Parents should remember not to use more than one child-safety seat connector on each anchor.
• Both the forward-facing convertible and high-back booster seat fit well after we raised the head restraints, which aren’t removable.
• The rear-facing convertible fit in the backseat without moving the front passenger seat forward.

What We Don’t

• We had to move the front passenger seat forward quite a bit to fit the rear-facing infant-safety seat behind it, which left our tester uncomfortable in the front seat. Thankfully, the infant seat was easy to install once we created enough room for it.
• The seat belt buckles are on floppy bases, which make it harder for young kids to buckle up independently.

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 30 infant-safety seat, a Britax Roundabout 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.

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