HELP!!! Rear-facing infant car seat that DOES NOT require passenger seat to be pushed forward?

I am 6'2" and my wife is 6'3". Our first child is on the way in 3 months.

WE REALLY DO NOT WANT TO GET RID OF OUR FAITHFUL PRIUS V (2014 model)!!! This thing has been a BEAST, which I hate to say about new cars because I've always been an "old car" guy. With almost 145,000 miles, we've still had ZERO mechanical trouble with it... and the gas mileage...

...so why would we have to get rid of it? Well, we tried a rear-facing infant seat in the back, and it required that the front passenger seat be pushed forward approximately 2 inches so that the child seat would fit. My wife was so uncomfortable on the "test run" when we had the empty seat installed that we knew there was no way we could keep the Prius v and still use that seat. It would be no better if I were the passenger and she drove (who wants to drive ALL THE TIME when you drive 50,000+ miles per year?!), or if the child seat were behind the driver's seat. We cannot have the passenger in the rear behind the driver, and the empty passenger seat pushed forward to accommodate a child seat. We need to carry our musical equipment and it will only fit if at least one of the rear seats can be pushed all the way forward or folded flat.

Is there a well-regarded infant seat that will fit in the rear seat of the Prius v, while still permitting the seat in front of it to be all the way back with an average comfortable recline position? (It'd be no gain to have the seat all the way back but have to put the seatback as far forward as it can go - that isn't comfortable either.)

If we can't find this, we will have to get rid of the Prius. And we will be cursing Toyota all the way to and from whatever place we go to get our next vehicle, for making a hybrid version of every last one of their small and mid-size vehicles... EXCEPT THE SIENNA!!!

 

Yeah, but it's a Chrysler product. Given their abysmal reliability ratings in the past, until a few years go by to prove the mettle of the Pacifica hybrid, I'm not going to throw my money out the window on a Chrysler product.

Yes.

Only trouble is, we also have a dog who travels with us most of the time. The only way that this could work is if we let the dog into the passenger side of the "60" portion, through the back door. It's possible... she's a small dog... it'd be worth trying.

I checked out the new Sienna today and it has uncomfortable immobile seat belt anchors. With my wife's dimensions, that won't work.

 

I have the big boy... the Prius v. Today we're going to test the seat we have, in the middle position. The acid test will be how the dog reacts to being stuck in the back seat.

 

I don't think I will be buying any Chrysler products. They constantly get terrible reviews, and the people I've known who've had Chryslers seem to have nothing but trouble with them. It's a shame, too... Chrysler used to make the best vehicles money could buy. I've had three 1980s era Chrysler products and they were all bulletproof. Nowadays... yeah, it's a shame.

But, there is one potential variable. Toyota's Sienna is not designed well for my wife. It has rigid seat belt anchors that are uncomfortable for her. It's the same with the Honda Odyssey. However, the Dodge and Chrysler minivans don't have this design problem. So... if we do have to get a minivan... we might just spring for a Chrysler product.

Thus far, we've solved the car seat problem by moving the driver's seat forward a bit... but hopefully our son will continue growing at a rapid rate so that we can face him forward soon. In December, we bought a 2004 4Runner, so when we need a bigger vehicle that fits the car seat a little better, that's the one we use. (I have to imagine that the resale value on the Prius v has been increasing dramatically recently, with the shocking run-up in gas prices... those poor oil companies must not have been profiting enough at two bucks a gallon, which is still too freaking expensive given that just two years ago or so, gas was a buck-twenty-nine here in northeast Ohio.)