2017 Audi A4 Allroad: Car Seat Check
CARS.COM — The 2017 Audi A4 Allroad is a family-friendly vehicle that adds more functionality compared with the sedan version on which it’s based. The redesigned Audi gets some aggressive styling cues to complement its elevated all-terrain capabilities. While Cars.com reviewer Aaron Bragman called the A4 Allroad “a yuppie in expensive hiking gear” (ouch), it offers the utility of a five-seat wagon along with some ruggedness to make it a little cooler for those yuppie parents — and it ain’t bad for installing car seats, either.
How many car seats fit in the second row? Two
What We Like
- Its two sets of lower Latch anchors sit underneath plastic covers and are easy to find and use; three top tether anchors are midway down the seatbacks in the outboard positions and nearer to the top of the middle seat.
- Our convertible seat in both the rear- and forward-facing positions installed easily and fit well, with no need to move the front passenger seat forward to accommodate the former.
- Our booster seat also installed easily on the wide rear seat; the seat belt buckles are on stable bases that — despite being embedded in the leather seats — are sufficiently far from the booster that kids should be able to strap themselves in easily enough.
What We Don’t
- The area where the Allroad gave us trouble was when installing our rear-facing infant safety seat. We had to move the front passenger seat forward, putting our 5-foot-8-inch tester’s knees about an inch from the glove box.
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, Jennifer Newman and Matt Schmitz 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 shorter 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.
