I hope your wife loves sitting in the trunk/boot...........................

 

We have 2002 XKR, our 3 year old granddaughter loves to ride with us in her car seat. She is not big enough to use a booster seat yet. Small car seat will buckle in, (barely) there is a tether latch behind seat back as well. I am 5'7", The seat back of the front seat hits the front of the car seat, so I have to move the seat up about two inches, which places my face a little close to sun visor. She has no leg room and sits "criss cross applesauce" formerly known as "indian style". She prefers the top down so not so claustrophobic, but does enjoy short rides with the top up. The depth of the seat is about 14 inches, so look for a seat with depth of that or less. I find that cars seats with 5 point harness built in are deeper that a high back booster.

 

I use the rear seat to store my umbrella!!!!

 

I tried to fit a rear facing child seat for my new grandchild. Wouldn’t work at all. I have since read that isofix points are standard on my 2013 version but cannot think that will make any difference. Ie still will not fit.

any hope of getting a baby safely in the rear ?

( my family are not big and I have had a couple of small adults in the back for short journeys including myself. Doable and quite fun if hood is down. )

 

If you're asking on this generation, the X100, it's worse in the back than the X150. I'm 5'10" and I'm the short one in my family; 2 adults up front really doesn't seem to jive with a rear facing child seat behind two adults in my family; maybe if one of you is really tiny and willing to ride shotgun but really far forward. I still question how safe that is. If X150, it would be better, but given it seems child seat laws change all the time resulting in bigger and bulkier seats and guidance to make little ones sit in them longer, I still would err on not doing it. The X150 seat itself (for the front) is bulkier in terms of the size of the seat back versus my one piece back X100 seats so who knows how much more or less it works with that factored in.

 

This video suggests it can be done.

 

We have managed to get a rear-facing baby seat on the back seat behind the passenger of a 2000 Jaguar XKR convertible (X100). Slide the front passenger seat forwards, put the baby seat in place, then wind the front passenger seat backwards and it crunches up against the baby seat, helping to hold it down and in place very securely.
I found the smallest car seat on the market in the UK is the Cuggl Chaffinch (which is also very cheap to buy). This DOES fit in the back and has the minimum adverse effect on the legroom for a toddler. Sometimes a child will have more legroom when they have grown bigger (counter-intuitively) because their upper leg will then be long enough that their lower leg can drop down into the footwell (rather than their whole leg being stretched out horizontally.

The other seat I found good is a booster seat (that has no back so it does not reduce the leg room available) -we use the Bubble Bum inflatable seat https://www.bubblebum.co/

I am 6' tall and could just about still fit in and drive OK with the front seat wound well forwards (to give max leg room in the rear).

 

I'm checking out that Bubble Bum you mentioned & it looks good.

I'm dead set on removing both bulky/heavy front seats in my 98 XK8 & replacing with an alternative so my 4 year old can be more comfortable. Perhaps the alternative seats will be more comfortable for front seat passengers too.

Most racing seats don't foldover to allow the passengers in the back. I'm open to any seat alternatives to experiment with?

 

Probably not the cheapest solution but you might check out Porsche 996/997 seats. They are considerably less bulky than the Jaguar ones with a much thinner back but are reasonably comfortable over long distances. No idea about the electrical integration, airbags and the like.

 

This is a good idea! So far I've had no luck locating any replacement seats like the Porsche on eBay. A search for "Car Seats" only leads to children's safety seats and not ones for a Porsche.
Where do you guys find replacement seats?

Unless I'm mistaken, I have a 1998 1st generation so don't believe that there's any airbags in the seatbacks that I'm losing? I'm guessing the airbags were added to the setbacks around 2005?

 

Looking at the picture of the child seat in the XK8 why not just put it in the centre and let the legs come foreword between the seats?

 

I wonder if that's possible the way the XK8 backseat is raised up in the center?

 

Not relevant.

 

We had no problem with the car seat for a babe, but I think that it would have failed when his legs got a bit longer.

 

You are loosing all the legroom in the thickness of the child seat and the original seat. Why not just take out the original and move it back or/ and get a thinner child seat.

 

I guess the seat belt wouldn't work properly. But it is irrelevant for us now, as the child in that picture is now 11, and has grown out of child seats!

 

Does your 11 year-old fit in the backseat?

 

He would - just (my wife just fitted, and she is two inches taller than the 11-year-old), but I traded the XK8 in for an XJL.

 

Excellent. Do you think these racing seats are thin enough to give an additional few inches to backseat passenger?


I'm only asking for your guess if it's thinner than the stock seats?

 

Passenger seat now installed and the difference is amazingly better. My son now has leg room because the racing seat is built differently with more space for legs. I highly prefer the reliable mechanical controls on the racing seat because one of the electrical controls on the OEM removed passenger seat was broken. The new seat is slightly less comfortable than the OEM seats but the OEM gave me electrical problems.

The installation took 4 hours to remove the old seat and install one seat as i had to drill new holes. It fits on the same rails the OEM seats used if you drill new holes. It sits slightly higher than OEM seats.

Imagine the judge's surprise at the coming June 26th, '23, Jaguar Club of Southern New England (Connecticut) meet-up when they realize only the outer shell of the car is still Jaguar! 😳 😆 🤣

These were $370 + tax for the pair of racing seats from Amazon: