All car seats are going to eat up more room when faced rearward for an infant! Luckily, one only has to endure the rearward facing seat for 18mo or so depending how big your kid is.

 

Yup, its just hard to maneuver a car seat with a child in it to get it in the middle position. Between the kid and the seat, its pushing 35-40 pounds.. Im fairly tall so I can do it, but my wife has to set the car seat down on the seat, climb in, the pick up the car seat to snap it into the base. Kind of a pain, especially in the winter when everything is covered in salt, you get your clothes dirty pretty easily. I'll get a crew cab next time around.

 

ahh, see, we got the carseat that had separate bases. We got 2 bases, one for each car. Seat would just set right down onto the base and clip into the locking mech. Took 2 sec to install and 2sec to remove. This only required one infant car seat because it mounted to the bases in each car. The seat fit our stroller too! Clipped and locked right in. Made going places super easy. Well worth the money IMO.
We still have that infant seat, 2 bases and stroller if you were interested. Top of the line components. We dont use them anymore. Still have the boxes too..lol

When we went to forward facing, different story. Those are permanent. We dont remove them.

 

Once your kids get older the quad is too small as well We grow them pretty tall up here and if you can't fit 6ft + in every seating position then the cab is too small.

 

Stuff'em back there and tell them to quit crying. I suppose you dont remember the days prior to the Quad cabs? Standard extended cabs used to get the job done just fine.
A lot of people are just spoiled these days. By spoiled, they spoil themselves.
I'm 6'3" and fit in the quadcab backseat just fine. I dont see a problem.
Also, this guy is talking about fitting a car seat..lol I doubt he'll own the truck when his unborn child grows to 6' tall...haha

 

I'm 6ft and don't fit in the back of a quad cab comfortably, you must have some awful short legs. If there was no choice then a quad is fine, since there is a choice I don't see why anyone buys the quads.

Would be interesting to see the figures on how many of each cab they sell.

 

I'm 6'3" 190lbs and have a 34" inseam. My legs are not short.

I JUST went out and verified....
Passenger seat all the way back incase you have a 7'3" passenger or a rude one who won't pull up at all. With the seatback sitting in a normal position, not reclined like a hoodlum... I fit fine with my knees to the outer sides which for me is a natural position.
Unless your 250lbs and/or have adults in the back every other day for long duration trips, I don't see why fitment is as big an issue as you are making of it. For me, a QC is overkill. Nobody ever sits in the back other than my son.

Crewcabs are $2500 more than a QC AND you lose bed size. If you want to retain the 6'4" bedsize, $3000 more!!! Not what I call a cheap upgrade to convenience kids! if I were sitting back there, different story. My kid and his future friends can deal with it or walk. Their choice. Until I sit in the back, I like and use the 6'4" worth of bedsize a heck of alot more than the extra interior space.

Remember, OP was comparing a Frontier to a QC ram. WAY more room in a Ram than a frontier that is same size as a Ranger.

Pics for OP to follow

 

here's my Pass seat ALL THE WAY BACK with my spare car seat setting in there to take this pic for ya.




Here's how much room is in my FULL SIZE BUICK


To give you an idea on the overall size of my Buick compared to the Truck.


I realize it's a different car seat, but to prove that they have the same Front clearance, here is a pic of both(yes my driver seat is further back, I am merely compariung the front distance of the 2 carseats to show they are the same dimensionsback-front)


As you can see, my Truck has more room than my 2003 Buick LeSabre which is a fullsize car.

 

My kids are adult sized, and my 09 has almost 100K on it - at least 50% of that with adult sized people in the back seat. I didn't even consider a Ram until 09 because they didn't build a real crew cab.

For the OP - take your car seat over to the dealer and try it out, see what works for you. For me, after having 3 full sized car seats (2 forward and one backward) in the back of my Crew (nieces) - I wouldn't want the quad.

 

so, you never owned a truck prior to 2009?
If so, you must have owned a Ford CrewCab. It's the only truck prior to the Quadcab that had nearly the same leg room. it had 1" more legroom in the rear than the QC does. thats it. Same front leg room.

2006 MegaCab was/is Crew..just FYI

I'm not implying Crews are not needed. But for the majority out there...they are overkill.