I'm trying to think of a solution that keeps the magic seat and offers tether anchors that are part of the magic seat.
I guess it could be done; simple hideaway anchors on the bottom of the magic seat, covered with sliders or something to keep the flat floor when needed, opened up to offer tether attachment points when needed.
Hmmmm.
In fact, if Honda does this, I'd like to be able to buy a retrofit magic seat.
My thought on why they didn't do this: the magic seat isn't anchored strongly enough for some engineer's comfort. It's anchored enough to keep itself from tearing away, especially given that (theoretically) the passengers are wearing their car-mounted seat belts that put at least some of the force into the car frame.
But maybe it's not anchored strongly enough to take the entire brunt of the force against a loaded magic seat. If it were done like the Ford described above, then all the force of a crash would be put on the magic seat itself--which translates to the swivel points and the two front latches--all for the entire seat. Can you imagine the potential of all three seating positions, or even two, filled with car seats attached to the magic seat via LATCH and those four magic seat attachment points taking all that strain in an accident?
F always equals MA. You have a 40 pound person plus the mass of the car seat itself, times two or three. Then there's the A of the front-end collision. Two of the magic seat's attachment points are swivel points, which undoubtedly give up some attachment firmness when compared to the middle row seat latches.
Yeah, it's probably better for the tether anchors to be part of the car frame for now, until and unless the engineers can make or certify those four (relatively speaking) weak attachment points of the magic seat to be suitable for taking all the force in a crash.
Remember, the middle seats are EACH firmly anchored by four fairly hefty attachment points, none of which are asked to swivel or otherwise do anything that might compromise their effectiveness. The two front "feet" of each seat do pull back on a spring; however, this doesn't affect their size or rigidity. And their failsafe mode is hooked ON with hooks forward and up, especially with weight on the seat. Different, and presumably better, than the magic seat.
I haven't seen the Windstar; what do their rearmost seats do? How do the seats themselves attach to the car? How do the tethers work back there?
Just some stream-of-consciousness rambling here...