How can something so small take up so much space?

We visited the Mazda dealer yesterday to get a trade-in valuation of our Mazda 3. B was just curious, but the salesperson, the same guy who sold us our Mazda 3, suggested that we should look at the larger Mazda 6 model. A fairly new father himself he warned us that we could find ourselves rather squished inside our existing car once the baby capsule was installed.

Today we tested his assertion and, by Jove, he was right! With our Safe'n'Sound Meridian AHR seat in rearward facing newborn mode my knees were almost touching the glovebox and my head the ceiling. Even B was not particularly comfortable.

Thankfully our stroller is reasonably small and fit in our hatchback's boot with room to spare. Still, we would be moderately restricted with boot space should we take it along with us.

The Mazda 3 interior is quite large for its external size class and we had envisaged it as being suitable for our future needs. Now we are troubled. We don't really want to spend big bucks upgrading our car's size. I guess that one of us could sit in the back next to the baby. Kids really do change everything!