TTAC Commentator Halftruth writes:
Hey Sajeev, maybe this has been covered before, but as I read thru new car reviews here on TTAC I see that every car maker has left out one of my fave features: the bench seat! I see these huge, gaudy, dust collector consoles in between the two front seats taking up leg and knee room! Am I the only one that misses the bench seat? And column shift? Say it ain’t so! I know they still exist on trucks to some degree but for me, my pref is a good ol’ bench seat. I prefer the 60/40 split and do think they are quite comfy (I am reminded of my years in a 96 Intrepid). I am sure the manufacturers are simply responding to market demands but what do you think? What does the B&B think? Am I sounding like a dinosaur here?
Sajeev Answers:
Oh, they are still out there. Take the Chevy Impala, Buick Lucerne and its Cadillac DTS sistership. (please) Except the Impala (for 2011) is now listed as 5-passenger only, ditto the once column-shifted Toyota Avalon. Plus we had Panther Appreciation week for a reason. Too bad all these vehicles are out of date: I have a hard time not wishing for “What Could Have Been.”
So are we screwed? Yes, at least in the short term. As a child of the 1980s, I remember when we had variety! American cars looked American, Japanese cars were clearly Japanese, and only serious performance vehicles were fitted with a console/floor shifter in their meager (yes, meager) interior dimensions. There was a vehicle for every taste, but alas, it couldn’t last.
I think the bench seat (preferably of the split/flight variety) shall make a comeback when space and value become a bigger concern. The challenge for Detroit, our bench seat flame keepers, is twofold: realizing that their seating history deserves a better home than their fleet queens, thus embracing the concept of making a platform–from the ground up–entirely in America for the American market. Hey, if it works for the American spec Camry and Accord, why not try it with a real American manufacturer with real American values?
Bonus! A Piston Slap Nugget of Wisdom:
And here’s proof. There was a middle ground for console and bench seat fans, perfect for anyone but the die-hard manual transmission enthusiast. Perhaps you need a smaller vehicle, good on gas with plenty of space for a family. And maybe you tote an extra kid (or three) during carpool season, but loathe the idea of owning a three-row CUV. Or you’re just a randy soul who wants your significant other right next to you at all times.
Behold: the cutting-edge design of the 1996 Ford Taurus. Yes, it looks like a catfish on wheels, but the design bones underneath targeted the high content vehicles made by Toyota at the time. So when the fishy Taurus hit the streets, it came armed with something rather awesome: a flip-fold center console with storage for cups, notepads, pens, cell phones, etc. It was an impressive piece of kit, winning an IDSA award to boot. Industrial Design gurus remember it well, even if they’d rather forget the sheetmetal.
And if Ford kept up this good work, there’d be a nice place for your iPod with a tasty little SYNC badge on a flip-fold console, folded away so your son and four of his friends can get a ride to school. But no such flip-fold console provisions existed on Mazda or Volvo platforms, so that piece of American ingenuity died when the American Taurus left us in 2006. And that’s a damn shame.
Send your queries to mehta@ttac.com. Spare no details and ask for a speedy resolution if you’re in a hurry.
And (speaking from personal experience) the “bench-buckets” in a Taurus actually felt like buckets when the console was folded. I haven’t sat in the front of a current gen Impala but the previous generation the bench felt like a bench when the armrest was down, just a bench with an armrest.
I like benches when properly done, and loved the one in my 1987 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme Brougham. (Given that I owned it in college, there are a few fond memories involving the opposite sex too.) My F150 is the only other bench seated vehicle I’ve owned and yeah I’ve got some fond memories with my current flame for that vehicle too… (Benches so you don’t have to climb into the back seat! – There’s a tag line for you.)
Maybe it’s because I’m too old (26), but I will never, EVER get why on anything equipped with an automatic, it’s a “sporty touch” to put the shifter where it takes up tons of space. Column shifters are immensely satisfying both for keeping the interior projections minimal, and using the shifter while both hands are crammed with food and drink. Also, for some reason I find a tactile joy from:
(A) slamming that thing to the left when I park and get out, it has this wonderfully aggressive feeling (it must be from cop-based entertainment)
(B) the way it detents so rapidly from R to D. Console shifters make J-turns a pain in the ass because you have to take your hands off the wheel. And if you’re not making J-turns on a regular basis, what ARE you doing? (Again, this is definitely the result of cop shows, or possibly the Blues Brothers).
*additional discussion topic: Parents have named their kids things like “Camry” and “Prelude,” but are there any youngsters out there named Prnddl? Rhymes with “Wendell,” another very popular name.
UPDATE: You know what it is? The Ford LTD J-turn in Terminator 2 when they’re escaping from the mental institution.
I agree with quick shifts from R to D and such. I hated console-mounted shifters for that reason: it was hard to hit the right detent, whereas console-mounted automatics seem to work better vis a vis the movement of the human arm.
I’ve never used a console-mounted manual, but the whole idea sounds hateful.
There are / have been plenty of Dash mounted manuals in Europe – Honda FR-V springs to mind but there are others
Autos on the floor looked pretty good in larger sporty cars like this Charger, but in general I agree with you.
http://www.redletterdodge.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Picture-006.jpg
As for column shifted manuals, they were pleasant enough to operate when they were in good condition, but there was a pronounced up-away-up motion to the 1-2 shift. That made them feel dowdy, unlike the smooth, fluid motion of a 2-3 or 4-5 shift with a good floor shifter.
Dash-mount manuals are not quite the same thing as column-mounted ones.
The shifter placement in the Matrix, seventh-gen Civic hatch and the similar placement in some minivans actually works very well. I’d take that over a column shifter in a heartbeat.
I completely agree with the column shifter being a more sensible location for automatic vehicles. If you think console shifters take up a lot space on cars, please see the ruin they are causing on the interiors of full size pickups.
I agree that putting automatic shifters on the floor to look “sporty” wastes tons of space. Personally, I like dash mounted shifters – like the Prius and Lexus HS and some minivans. It doesn’t waste space that can be better put to use for storage cubbies, and the shifter is easy to see and grab. Large shifters with chrome zigzag detents and sport-mode fake “manual” shift up/down positions on automatics look silly and are annoying to navigate. I must admit I enjoyed slamming the column shifter of rental Sables to Park in the day, too. But, being able to just stab a Power button to shut off the engine and automatically engage park with one hand while opening the door with the other on the HS is pretty cool, too.
Bench seats, while nostalgic, are unlikely to ever return in mid-range family cars because, as one poster said, an extra airbag would be required. I could see it possibly appearing as a “new novel feature” in a two-row MPV or SUV designed to compete with costlier three-row minivans, though, as it would allow seating for 6 in a compact space, assuming that at 2+ passengers are children.
I wholeheartedly agree, trk2. As an added bonus, it’s really really hard to spill coffee/dirt/french fries/etc. into the opening mandated by a column shifter. Console shifters just look so out of place in a big truck.
(B) the way it detents so rapidly from R to D. Console shifters make J-turns a pain in the ass because you have to take your hands off the wheel. And if you’re not making J-turns on a regular basis, what ARE you doing? (Again, this is definitely the result of cop shows, or possibly the Blues Brothers).
Definitely the Blues Brothers.
Ah the Taurus front bench, had a 96 one of the first for our company, look good held a fair amount of stuff but the biggest flaw of it, when opened you could not get the ashtray open. This was a major design flaw, and no I do not smoke, but I needed the lighter to plug in my cell phone, GPS radar… hard to belive this won a award with a major F*** up like that.
Interesting! I only played with them in rental cars, so I never knew. Then again, a second redesign could easily have a power point inside the flip-fold assembly.
Too bad this idea didn’t stick around for continuous improvement. (It got smaller in the 2000 Taurus before it went away)
They revised the flip-fold console in 2000 so it lay flat on the floor. The dashboard was also redesigned in 2000 and the ashtray moved.
In Mary Walton’s book “Car” there was discussion as to who let this stupid idea slip through development.
I used to like that console a lot in my Grandmother’s 1997 Taurus. It even had a special bin to hold 6 cassette tapes!
…and while we’re at it, why don’t any manufacturers offer ye olde 3-on-the-tree on their new cars? Man, I miss that.
Yeah, I had several of those; the ’48 Plymouth felt completely different from 40’s or 50’s Fords and Chevys; don’t know why. I even had a 1960 220S sedan with four on the column. In typical Mercedes fashion it worked very well, but I don’t miss column shifters at all.
Anyone who, like me, is over six feet tall and has ever had to be the bench-seat passenger of a short driver will probably, also like me, tend to avoid buying a bench-seat vehicle in spite of the fact that anyone who rides with us won’t lack for legroom.
Yeah, that Taurus Bench Seat looked cool, but only one of those cup holders were useful, and when you popped it open you couldn’t access the power outlet.
Front bench seat safety is an issue. No easy way to provide a shoulder seat belt and airbag for the front and center seat.
Twotone
Just to expand on twotone’s insight, the front bench was mostly used to seat a child in the middle. But these days, having a child under 12 in the front is a safety no-no. And given how fat Americans have become, nobody really wants 3 adults sitting that close to eachother.
So I’m not really seeing the value of a bench, esp. since it detracts from lateral support.
My ’92 Town Car had a HUGE passenger side air bag which Ford suggested in the manual was intended to protect the center and right front seating positions. I was really glad I never experienced what happens when that monstrosity goes off.
The design of most newer instrument panels, with the emphasis on the center stack, impedes placing an airbag where it can protect the center passenger, and also intrudes on potential center passenger knee room. I wish we could have instrument panels again that array all of the controls cockpit style around the driver, like 1971-74 fullsize Buicks for example.
My 99 Ranger with standard cab has the perfect arrangement. Bench seat and 5 speed.
Not a fan of column shifts, when I had (3) Taurus company cars in the 90s I was pretty unhappy that the 96 came only with the stupid arrangement shown.
One of the reasons I opted out of company cars and bought my own car.
I had the pleasure of driving one of these a few months back for a couple of days while my car was in the shop, the local Ford dealer was out of loaners so they took one from the used car lot for me to borrow. I was upset at the time as i had just bought my car the day before and was going to have to drive this 96 Tarus with 180,000 miles on it and looked liked it had gone thru a war. I will admit that i was rather pleased as it drove rather nicely and the seats where very comfortable, more comfortable than my new vechicle which i found suprising.
I’d think the center seat is dead due to safety concern/standards. A center seat would mean more belts, and another airbag.
At this point, I don’t even understand why they bother with automatic stick. A large majority of cars are available only with an automatic and in 99% of the cases the actual lever has no mechanical connection to the transmission and for 99% of users they utilize P,N and D period. So why not go to push buttons and be done with it. Put them on the steering wheel. Think of all the storage space and cup holder area that the elimination of the shifter could provide.
Also, I’m curious if any other woman other than my mother wants a huge space in between the seats to store her purse. Try as we might, my dad and I can’t convince mom that the purse can live anywhere other than right beside her.
Also, I’m curious if any other woman other than my mother wants a huge space in between the seats to store her purse. Try as we might, my dad and I can’t convince mom that the purse can live anywhere other than right beside her.
Mikedt: It’s a woman thing – don’t even try to understand!
Push-button shifters don’t conform to Federal standards any more. The Chrysler cars of the 1960’s that had push-button shifters were built before those standards took effect. With push-button shifters, it’s too easy to press the wrong button …
Also, most transmissions still have at least some form of manual valve body. The recent “sudden acceleration” scare drew some attention to fault-tolerance in completely electronic and programmable systems. If you have a manual valve body, if only to remove all hydraulic pressure to the rest of the shift solenoids when “neutral” is selected, you are no longer completely reliant on the electronic/programmable systems. I’d rather have a method of disconnecting the transmission that is completely unreliant on and unaffected by electronics and software. In my own car, that would be the clutch pedal, but I digress.
“in 99% of the cases the actual lever has no mechanical connection to the transmission”
I don’t know about that. In the case of the Honda line (a product line I’m very familiar with…), 100% of the automatics still have a mechanical connection from the lever to the transmission. Given liability concerns, I’m guessing the engineers prefer to use a tried and true system to tie the parking pawl to the tranmsission lever.
I don’t miss bench seats so much (particularly the kind that have only one legroom adjustment), but I do miss the ability to slide across from seat to seat easily. Even some bucket seat cars permit this by having room under the dashboard, but all that room is being taken up nowadays.
The 2010 Taurus is a terrible offender in this regard, with a center console so high you feel like you’re in a cocoon: http://blog.al.com/engine-block/2009/07/Taurus%20interior.jpg
I think the bench seat (preferably of the split/flight variety) shall make a comeback when space and value become a bigger concern
No, and you can thank high roofs for this. The front bench seat made sense when seats were low to the ground and floorplans spread like surburbia, but now that you can fit three rows of two people in a smaller package thanks to upright seating it’s less of a need.
Personally, I’m glad. If I needed to take six people, I’d prefer a narrow, tall and long car to a wide and low one.
It’s amazing how our Panther debate is going to trickle down here: tall and narrow will fall out of style, and low and long will come back at some point. Eventually we’ll want less frontal area (from more overhangs to retain the same amount of space) for better fuel economy, for starters.
Obviously just a hairbrained guess, but that’s my story/stickin’ to it.
I’m not sure. Stricter requirements for fuel economy is going to eventually make cars more minivanish, not less. Think of it as a return to the kind of seating cars had in the 1940s: upright, with a high roof. I’d suspect those cars would have had shorter hoods, too, if the engines weren’t so large.
Long, wide and low was a styling affectation from the mid-fifties. Designers loved it and buyers like the look when it was new and fresh, but if the SUV boom, and the crossovers that replaced them, and the minivans that killed the big wagons all taught us something, it’s that people, eventually, come back to cars that work for them.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see the JDM minivan engine-under-seats make a comeback for this reason: why waste all those inches of hood?
All that said, I wouldn’t mind seeing massive consoles go away. I’ll agree with you there.
Bench seats provide a wonderful sense of space. Even if you’re not the stereotypical fat N. American, you can still spread out and actually enjoy the drive.
I second comments on column shift. Much more logical.
Personally, I’m glad that trucks still offer the bench seat option, with a flip-fold centre console for getting at personal effects, when needed, and an armrest, when needed.
I would also call for larger windows to aid in the airy expansive experience, but that’d be getting off-topic, we can’t have that!
Boy, am I vindicated! My ’04 Impala has the split-bench w/o the console. Love it for that reason, as I wanted the maximum interior room (no sunroof, either) available. Yeah, I like the “sportier” look a console offers, but for sheer practicality, the bench can’t be beat. Even tho’ I don’t carry six people in it, I like the fact that my knee isn’t cramped and I can stretch out much more and even slide in from the passenger side without too much trouble – and – because I can!
I don’t know what I’ll do for my next vehicle when the time comes, but for now, the bench seat is the way to go.
@Halftruth: Yes you are a dinosaur. Bench seats have to reason to exist. The old days are gone.
A bench seat in a car is like Bill O’Reilly in Keira Knightley.
A bench seat in a car is like Bill O’Reilly in Keira Knightley.
Wow, there’s an image. (Said the mid 30’s male dating the mid 20’s female.)
@Dan: No neg on you or other skilled pickup artists above a certain age.
I just $&^*ing hate O’Reilly.
But, you go on with your bad self brothah!
I’ll stick w/ bucket seats. A seat that holds you in place is so much more comfortable on a long drive.
Nobody ever said that a sculpted bench is out of the question. Matter of fact, the ’96 Taurus’ bench was fairly huggy, for a family sedan that is.
The back seats of my GTI were sculpted. While nice for back seats, they didn’t hold a candle to the buckets up front. For a skinny, small guy like myself, I like the actual side and leg bolstering of a bucket. With leather seats, it is almost a necessity to have buckets versus a bench.
Oh I agree with that, but I suspect the back seat of your GTI was about as good as the seats in a CamCord, but didn’t have a pointless console taking precious space away.
Ugh. Uncomfortable, no lateral support. I’ve never seen one with any kind of useful lumbar support adjustement either. Only useful in those fly-over places where the roads are straight and flat for miles and miles and miles. Has there been a European car with a bench seat in the last 40 years??
And if you have occasional need for more than four people in a car, take two cars. If you have regular need for more than four people in a car, then buy a proper minivan!
Enter 2000-2006 Taurus. They have bench with drivers lumbar support.
A couple can sit real close to each other on the bench seat of an old pickup truck while the couple in a high dollar coupe is separated by the wide chastity console.
For that reason, bucket seats are actually anti-youthful and not sexy and yet somehow have the image of cool.
But I guess if you don’t want your woman snuggled up next to you, most sporty cars will ensure she is walled off from you in a sunken down seat on the other side of the vehicle.
This helps us to find better places than in the car to do such things that distract one from his driving.
…said the guy who did most of his courting in a VW Bug.
Exactly!!! I had a manual 4 on the floor pickup truck in the late 70’s Grabbing 2nd gear was the perfect excuse to grab a little of her thigh while I was there. It’s hard to get to know a girl when she’s in a bucket seat.
Three wide as actual seating isn’t worth much now that cars aren’t 80″ wide anymore. Sure you can cram three in anyway, we all did once, but we didn’t have new car money back then.
Three wide as better use of space for the driver is something I sorely miss. A center console the size of a Coleman cooler wedged up against my knee just makes a big car feel like an small one inside. (Taurus SHO I’m looking at you.)
The ironic thing is the only mainstream vehicles which still give you the option of a bench are the full size trucks and they’re so big that even the buckets have plenty of space.
Someone please explain why a FWD car with transverse engine and transaxle arrangement needs a huge “tunnel” between the front seats. Yet my RWD Tundra with large automatic underneath can have a bench seat with at least a little foot room for the center passenger. BTW, the center position has lap and shoulder belts as well as the fact that the passenger side SRS (sodium azide, not “air”, bag) is designed to protect both seating positions.
In a good many cases, it’s because the same vehicle platform has to accommodate an all-wheel-drive version with driveshaft up the middle. Your truck also has a much higher floor than a passenger car, which allows the floor to be flat and the drive shaft underneath – but there is a lot of wasted space on either side of it below the floor, and every pickup truck is like that. The central tunnel also usually gives a path to route the exhaust system, parking brake cable, etc. In your truck, the higher floor has plenty of room for all that. But … it has a higher floor, which makes the vehicle as a whole higher, which is not good for center of gravity and not good for aerodynamics!
I know what the Golf Mk5 chassis looks like underneath – it has a huge central tunnel – to make room for the 4motion version. Mine doesn’t have 4motion, but the floor pan is the same.
Some front-drive cars DO have either a minimal or no central tunnel – notably the cars without an all-wheel-drive variation. The latest Honda Civics are but one example.
“Fleet” gets it right. As a survivor of the dinosaur age, I can personally testify to the advantages of a bench seat with a high school honey who was “afraid of doors and windows” (i.e. sat snuggled against you in the center of the big bench seat). I even mastered the art of shift the 3-on-the-tree manual transmission with my left hand . . . while my right hand was doing other things.
In all seriousness, bench seats are inconsistent with high-G loads going around corners, work best with lap belts and would complicate the placement of airbags for the center passenger. They are not necessarily less comfortable than buckets, especially in a vehicle with a fairly upright seating position.
That said, as a tall person, I somewhat resent the increasing intrusion of the console and assorted stuff on room for my right leg . . . as does my wife, who also is tall. This may look cool and aircraft-like, but the reality is that it forces your right leg into only one position, which will be tiring on a long drive unless you use a cruise control.
One of the consequences of the demise of the bench seat is that the only 6+-passenger vehicles are minivans, SUVs and crossovers, whereas, even in the 1950s (where cars weren’t that huge), the 1950s American sedan was a genuine 6-passenger vehicle.
Few things to think about here.
Three-across seating (for adults) implies a wide vehicle – with a lot of frontal area, which means a lot of drag, which is not good for fuel economy, and we know where that’s going.
The need for an extra airbag, and someplace to anchor a shoulder strap, and some way of dealing with side impact situations, are all not in favour of having bench seats. Not saying it’s impossible … but what do you do as a vehicle designer to hold someone in that central position in their place in a side-impact situation.
It’s easier to just not deal with these situations and only provide two-across seating in the front. Three-across in the rear is okay because the rear passengers don’t need airbags and there is generally a place to anchor a shoulder strap.
I’m not 100% sure, but I don’t think the pickup trucks are subject to the same collision requirements as passenger cars.
Three-across seating (for adults) implies a wide vehicle – with a lot of frontal area, which means a lot of drag, which is not good for fuel economy, and we know where that’s going.
Not really, look at the extreme examples like the Ferrari Testarossa. Tiny nose, big cargo hole from insane overhang. More overhang lowers frontal area, gives more space for crash impact management, etc…
Good points about safety, the extra airbag will be a big expense, and if you do it poorly (1998-ish Deville) both front passengers will suffer.
In an automatic, non-performance vehicle, I’d take a bench seat and column shifter any day of the week. Thankfully trucks still have this option.
I lament the loss of this feature in sedans.
Imagine a new 300C equipped in this manner. Wow.
We bought a new Sable in 97 with the same arrangement in the picture. The seats were actually pretty comfortable and there was plenty of storage space. When the kids were still home we flipped it to the middle seat position a few times and used it for a 6th person. Since then we have had a 2000 Sable LS with buckets and console and a 04 Taurus SEL with that also. The seats were no better than the 97 Sable and there is very poor storage with the 6 disc changer in the console.
Love the bench seat and also love column shifters. There’s just something very comfortable about them, with plenty of room. If a car was geared towards sportiness, I can understand, but for most sedans and SUV’s, it’s a waste to designate an entire console just to slide a lever from P to D.
My guess is a few people in focus groups associated them with “geriatric cars” so car companies rushed to dump them as soon as possible. The cardinal sin in car design is to make an “Old Man’s” car.
I vote for buckets on all my cars and trucks. I chose my Silverado diesel because it had buckets rather than the split bench. That way we have independent control of our comfort factors on our long days towing the Airstream. We also have more flexibility to accommodate some of our very large friends. Both seat variants of the truck have column shifters, so that is not a factor.. I would never have anyone in the middle, regardless of the seat conformation.
On the Genesis, I do use the manual shift gate very frequently to slow down the car at stop signs and lights and also to keep somewhat legal on the steep downhills near my home without dragging the brakes. The car is geared so high that there is little engine braking available. That would not be possible with a column shift.
Bench, buckets, it really doesn’t matter if they would just get that PITA console out of the way. Just the illusion of extra room would be nice even if it was just floor space.
With a FWD small car a flat floor and open space would make even the smallest car seem much larger.
This is a design cliche that should at least be an option. It has been done to death and it needs to go whether there’s a bench seat or buckets involved.
I would like nothing better than to see the flat open space of early 60s GM compacts like the F85, Corvair, Skylark and Tempest. Or like the Toronado and Eldorado. And if one wants a console you can order it.
Any of these automakers listening ????
+1.. pretty much, this was the other half of what I was saying.. Thanks Dweezil..
Sorry to chime in again … it’s just that I know how and why some of this stuff happens. In a lot of cars nowadays, the front part of the center console ahead of and below the radio etc contains at least a portion of the HVAC equipment, which means it can’t be “optional” any more.
I know your response is another question; “why does the HVAC system have to be there, instead of buried up inside the dash”. Because the real estate where the HVAC system formerly lived, is now filled with airbags, crash structure, glovebox, etc. Remember how in the eariler days of airbags, how many cars didn’t have a glovebox (or had only a uselessly small glovebox)? That’s because the HVAC equipment is still where it traditionally was, and the airbag took up the space where the glovebox was. Want to have both a useful glovebox and an airbag? Then the HVAC equipment needs to go somewhere else, which it did – into the center area of the dash.
Not to mention that people nowadays want dual zone climate control and A/C and all that, and all the ducts and equipment to make all this happen takes up even more room.
In a pickup truck, you can still have the HVAC buried up in the dash and thus no center console … but you pay for it with the size and weight of the vehicle.
I HAVE owned vehicles with no center console. My ’78 Civic had no airbags, no A/C at all nevermind a dual-zone automatic setup, minimal crash structure, etc. My ’84 Toyota pickup – likewise.
I seem to remember reading an NHTSA report that discussed the risks of not mandating front center shoulder belts. The conclusion was that the chance of fatalities was extremely low because of the infrequency of the use of that seat. Still, lapbelts-only are extremely dangerous and led to a number of highly publicized cases of paralysis in the 1980s. 3-point belts have been required in the rear outboard positions since 1989 (1991 in trucks) and since 2007 in all rear center seats. Toyota and Ford (and maybe the others) include standard front center shoulder belts in their full-sized trucks. Strangely, they are not included in some of their 6-passenger crew models. Bottomline, enjoy your bench seat but never let anyone sit in that center position if it’s not equipped with a 3-point.
I would have a lot easier time deciding which car to buy if more cars had bench seats. I have a third child on the way, so I need a 5-seater , but I also have an older step-son who rides along some times, so if I just buy a normal station-wagon he’ll just have to walk, or take a bus. (he doesn’t have a license, and probably won’t afford one for some time either) And to those who think we need wider cars to make decent three-seater benches in front, doesn’t most cars have three seats in the back with the current ‘normal’ width? And although column shifters would be cool, I think most manufacturers can offer either ‘paddle-shifters’ or push-button automatics by now. Offcourse any ‘sporty’ driving would be more or less out of the question unless you ride with people you know (or want to know) intimately…
I LOVE bench seats. My first ride in highschool was my mom’s ’87 Taurus wagon. Bench seats. Red velvet interior. Got hella road dome in that whip. So proper.
I’ll take a column shifter in any automatic, but no bench seats period. I’ve gotten stuck in the front middle seat of a Lincoln Town Car, a Ford Crown Vic, an S10 pickup, a 1500-series Silverado and a F150 with a stickshift. I’d rather be squeezed in the jump seat of a first-generation S10 extended cab.
The problem with a bench seat is it’s just that — a flat bench with no lateral support. All you have to hold you in place are your lap belt and a death grip on the steering wheel. I’ll take individual seats with well designed side bolsters every time.
According to Chevrolet’s website, the 60/40 bench seat is still an option on the 2011 Impala.
I have owned some HUGE bench seat cars, like a ’74 Electra and a ’77 Town Car, but even then the front middle seat got very little use. However, those cars did feel a lot roomier to the driver and shotgun passenger. The best are the 1971-76 GM fullsize cars with “fuselage” body styling; the doors curve away from the seats right at elbow and hip level, giving you the same room to roam on the door side as well.
Oh, and bench seats don’t hold you in place in the corners? Get a 70’s car with velour seats. Problam solved.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but couldn’t the new Ford Taurus Interceptor or Dodge Charger Pursuit be converted into a bench, if buyer demand was there? Both are column shift.