How Do Car Seats Fit in a 2021 Hyundai Elantra?
The verdict: With a starting price of $20,645, including a destination fee, the 2021 Hyundai Elantra is a compact sedan that can work well for smaller families, even those with kids in rear-facing car seats. With its redesign for the 2021 model year, the Hyundai Elantra offers excellent drivability, a roomy interior and an 8-inch touchscreen with standard wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.
Does it fit three car seats? No
Take a look at how the Latch system and each car seat scored below in our Car Seat Check of the 2021 Hyundai Elantra.
Related: Search Car Seat Checks
A Grade
- Booster: Our high-back booster seat fit well in the Elantra’s backseat. The outboard seat belt buckles are on stable bases that sit up high enough to be easily grasped by kids.
B Grade
- Latch: The Elantra has two sets of lower Latch anchors in the outboard seats. In our test car, the lower Latch anchor that was closest to the rear door was difficult to use because the seat cushions sat right against the anchor. Thankfully, there was a little more room around the inner Latch anchor, making connection easier. The sedan also has three top tether anchors on the sedan’s rear shelf, behind the head restraints. They were easy to find and use.
- Infant: The Elantra’s backseat legroom grew by over 2 inches, which helped our rear-facing infant seat to easily fit in the backseat. We struggled, however, to connect to the outboard Latch anchor with this car seat’s rigid connectors.
- Rear-facing convertible: This rear-facing car seat also fit well in the spacious backseat, but connecting to that lower Latch anchor still took some effort with this car seat’s hooklike Latch connectors.
- Forward-facing convertible: The convertible car seat fit well in its forward-facing position. The Latch access remained an issue, but we were able to easily use the sedan’s top tether anchor.
C Grade
- None
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: One room, fit or connection issue. Some problems accessing the third row when available.
C: Marginal room plus one fit or connection issue. Difficult to access the third row when available.
D: Insufficient room, plus multiple 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 Chicco KeyFit 30 infant-safety seat, a Graco Contender 65 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. Learn more about how we conduct our Car Seat Checks.
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.
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