...That said, she loves captains chairs but wanted more practicality of a bench. According to the salesmen, it is no longer possible in 2020 to get a GT with a bench as they are forced captains chairs...
We just purchased a 2020 GT Machine Gray last week with the bench but it was hard to find. Most of the GT stock in our area (Western NY - Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse) only came with Captain’s chairs.
Having lived with it for a week, I’m glad we got the bench. We were really looking for a CX-5 with more cargo space and that’s exactly what the CX-9 is. Occasional 3rd row use is a bonus.
In my area, at the time I looked( about a month ago), there were no GT's available with the bench in my area. It really frustrates me...
I talked directly to 5 different dealers with the specs I was looking for and in every case there were able to find one, it just wasn’t on their lot. Dealers swap stock all the time in order to help customers.
Since it's been mentioned the bench for kids, if anyone was hoping for centre of bench position for car seat, don't bank on it. Not a deep seat and rock hard, I found it not possible to secure my seats in middle (a Graco and a Clek). I was disappointed, as centre is the safest spot. So, with one kid, captains chairs would have been ok as car seat on one side and wife on the other is how we roll now anyway.
If someone, for whatever reason, needs car seat in middle (say you want 3 car seats across), IMO visit Kia.
A bit misleading as the manual and the 2nd row seat show that you can install a car seat in the middle position if you wanted to. It seems that the limitation is the car seat itself. I personally don't have my child's car seat installed in the middle because I sometimes need extra cargo space, and with the car seat installed behind the passenger seat, I can still fold down the 60 split of the bench (as opposed to only being able to fold down the 40 split with the car seat installed in the other 2 positions on the bench).
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You can also install a car seat in one of the 3rd row seats as well.