Once the sides start folding it is only going to get harder. I finally used a couple of small plastic rods to push on the inside corners so the filter was essentially pulled into the slot rather than pushed.
Cabin Air Filter
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On our 2009, the tracks that the filter slides into, on each side of the housing, are slightly curved. If you use a flashlight and look carefully when the filter is removed, you can see what i mean. I had to angle slightly downward while inserting the filter, as well as pushing inward.
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Your old one shows the kind of folding I talked about that even the factory does. You can see a couple of large folds in the sides in the center top and, if you look closely, there are smaller folds all along the top and bottom sides. Hold a ruler up to the monitor and you can tell the old filter is significantly narrower than the new one. It looks to me like about 2 to 4 pleats on the new one. That is how much open space there was (or more) when the old one was installed.