What should a buy as a good, safe, convertible carseat to fit in Mazda 6 and Ford Focus?

i have the same car seat right now for our new born...the Graco Safe Seat. if you go to Graco's website you'll see the different stages of car seats. the Safe Seat is considered step 1 and then there is step 2 which is the convertible one that is rear facing until the baby is big enough to be front facing. they are called: Toddler Safe Seat Step 2. here is the link for it: http://www.gracobaby.com/Search%20Results/Pages/Se...

Albeebaby.com has some awesome deals on carseats. we bought our step 1 there for $99 w/free shipping.

It is rare to find the car seats with the bars now. Some studies claim that it could actually hurt a child more, causing them to fling against the bar at the same speed the car was traveling. It would be similar to a person crashing into the dashboard of their car. Car seat standards change almost every year. My sister had a baby 9 years ago and when I had my son in late May, she wasn't familiar with the 5 point harness system because that wasn't what they had used then. However, I trust the 5 point harness system. I just recently purchased two convertible car seats online, one from Walmart and another one from Baby Surplus, which is the Ebay version of Albee Baby. They have a car seat known as the Fisher Price Safe Voyage Convertible Car Seat. It is made by Britax (perhaps the most cherished and trusted name in convertible car seats) but is half the price. I spent about $130 on it. Both of the car seats I ordered do not have a bar.

i have this car seat in my daughters grandmothers car http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_... and i have this one in my carhttp://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_... i love them both and you can put both of these car seats rear and forward facing too. and you might have to put it on the passager side in the back seat so you can move the frount seat up more if need to be if its to large to fit behind the driver side.

I have the evenflo Triumph and it is kinda of big but I have an SUV . My husband has a mazda protege and we have the evenflo tribute deluxe 5 and it fits nicely and has good ratings . I know the triumph goes to 50lbs and the tribute goes to 40lbs.

The safe seat 2 is a forward facing seat only. I have a very small car as well, a Honda Fit. We have the Evenflo Triumph Advanced. It's a great seat and when ready to turn around it goes to 50 lbs.