Bucket seats: Seats that Fix a Person due to Structural Features.

Often racing cars are equipped with one such bucket seat, but those sold to the general public may have two or more. Bucket car seats were first used in small European cars after World War II due to their compact size compared to ordinary seats. However, no one thought about their sportiness. Racing variants were launched by Colin Falwell in 1963 in the UK. Then bucket seats began to gain popularity; they were especially common on double European sports cars.

For decades, American cars were equipped with ordinary seats without a hint of racing affiliation. However, the release of sports versions of such compact models as the Ford Thunderbird significantly contributed to the popularity of “buckets”. By 1962, more than a million American cars were equipped with sports seats right on the assembly line; often they were equipped with a kind of console, where the gear lever and parking brake were built.

Bucket seats became even more popular with the advent of fast pony cars (such as the Ford Mustang, for example). Also, in order to save space, such chairs were installed on compact cars like the Chevrolet Vega that appeared.

By the nineties, even trucks began to be equipped with sports seats, but not for reasons of practicality, but only to give their car an appropriate image and personal traits.

Although the back row of most models is an ordinary car seat, four-seater cars are sometimes equipped with sports seats in the back. Long wheelbase vehicles such as the Lexus LS 460L or the Porsche Panamera bring the number of passengers down to four, but provide more room and room for the second-row seater.

Bucket seats have the following features:

Originally, bucket seats for cars were used in auto racing to ensure maximum safety and comfort for pilots. Although, perhaps, comfort was relegated to the background, in the seats for sports cars of production models, the problem of comfort was finally solved – they were equipped with additional regulators . Products of this type include:

• The presence of semi-rigid stops under the hips;
• The presence of shoulder stops (although some models do not have them);
• Monolithic design – no division into back and pillow;
• Light weight, which is achieved using Kevlar, carbon fiber and plastic.

The ergonomics of sports seats are given a lot of attention. If standard seats should be minimally comfortable and at the same time inexpensive to manufacture, then sports options are created so as not to interfere with the driver’s control of the car and at the same time securely fix it in one position . Often, sports seats do not have a completely standard fit, which, however, allows the driver to fit in such a way that he does not have to reach the key controls of the car – the steering wheel, gear knob, console buttons, levers, etc. By the way, because of the specific shape, such seats are also called buckets.