Recommend Inexpensive Carseat for 3 Yr Old for Grandparents' Car

[not_telling]

We're expecting baby #2 in October and are anticipating life to be a bit...tumultuous....for a while.  My parents are 20 min. away and will certainly be coming over to help out, hang out/play with DS.  We're all thinking it might be useful if they had a carseat for DS in their car so they could actually take him fun places or bring him home if I drop him off, etc.   My parents are in their early 70's and are pretty physically fit, although my mom is recovering from back surgery and will not be back to full strength for quite some time.  They have a Prius.

DH and I have a Britax Marathon and a Cosco Scenera for our cars.  We're still RF, but anticipate switching to FF very soon.  We have found the Scenera to be a real PITA in terms of tightening the straps when DS is in it.  I don't want my parents to have to struggle to get the straps securely/closely tightened.  Even the Marathon seems to require some real solid pulling to be adequately tightened.  I don't know if straps get any easier to tighten once you're FF...?

Suggestions for a very safe seat (I won't even go into my anxieties about my dad's driving) that is not too expensive and would be easy for 70 year old grandparents to operate?

[SynEpona]

All seats pass the same safety standards, so knowing for sure if one is 'safer' than another is just relying on the manufacturers' sales pitch :) which can't help but be biased.

That said, we have a Maestro for a spare seat for DS, and I'm happy enough with it. It works, he fits in it well, and it was not expensive. He has much nicer seats in our vehicles, but this one is for a friend in our car, or for DS in MIL's or my parents' vehicles, so it's not a frequent use seat, and not for long rides. He loves that it has cupholders :)

It is a FFng seat that converts to a booster later on. In Canada, the weight limit is 47ish lbs, and at 4yo, DS can use the 2nd from top slots on it,so it's got a good amount of room for him to grow. It's light weight, so it's easy for us to tote around as the spare,and it installs easily enough in every vehicle we've had it in.

[DahliaRW]

I'd second the maestro.  It's ffing only, but at  3 I wouldn't worry about him ffing occassionally.  It's a lot easier to adjust straps ffing than rfing, in general.