hey Serge...

First off, like to extend my congrats to you and your wife for your upcoming birth of a child. Real exciting and anxious time of your life you won't forget especially if it's your first time, like me.

Regarding the 'shock experience', my baby has been fine with the stock shocks throughout all the typical road bumps and potholes. Only when you hit those last minute unexpected ones at high speed does it startle her. Otherwise, the "bumpy" ride actually puts her to sleep faster. Figure that!

Anyway, the only thing I suggest in getting, that's VERY HIGHLY recommended, would be the seat extenders that Tone will be offering soon or from Alan (Big Meat VX?). I have Alans original version installed and it makes life a whole lot easier for not only going to the rear seat but also installing the baby seat. I'm not sure whether Alan still offer these anymore.

Before I installed the brackets, I managed to wrestle the hand carry rear-facing baby seat between the seats (with the baby inside) to rest on top of the center arm rest console then flip the passenger seat forward and lift the baby seat with one arm (while 1/2 my body out the door) and drop into the installed cradle. Believe me, this gets tiring after 3-4 months of continuously doing this process each time you enter or leave the VX! And it REALLY starts getting you as the baby grows and adds weight to the seat. Also, Cindy was getting tired of crawling between the seats to get to the back since the rear facing seat took up a lot of room to go through the normal way.

And when we had to get the front-facing child seat, I knew that I had to install the seat extenders to allow me to carry her safely and place her in the already installed baby seat. The brackets definitely allowed me to squeeze to the back with baby in hand and place her without a glitch.

Hopefully Tone will have his versions available soon to the public as baby or not, the brackets make a difference in getting to the back seat area. Good luck to ya'!