The Front Seat Blues

Is this writer the only one in America who misses bench seats in cars and trucks? You show me a good bench seat as the front seat and a manual transmission and I will show you instant memories of hugging your girlfriend (or boyfriend of course) and sprawling out to watch a drive-in movie through your windshield on a Friday night.

Nowadays we have these damn bucket seats and once you are strapped in you can barely hug yourself let alone another person. I tell you it just ain’t right!  It's like calling a fender a side panel; that isn''t right either!

But I digress! The purpose of this article is to tell you a little something about the front seat of your vehicle. Okay, let’s start with the fact that the front seat is the chair you sit in while driving or riding in a motor vehicle. If there is someone out there who did not know that then please, do not drive!  We aren't talking about how a fuel pump works here; visualize a chair and let's move on.

Front seats are made up of the following parts:

• Armrest
• Backrest
• Headrest
• Seat base
• Seat track

Now as we all know front seats have been refined since the good old days and no doubt those refinements are helpful for those out there who have back problems. Today’s modern front seats have backrest angles, cushions, fore-and-aft positions, different headrest angles and can be tilted for optimal comfort. Heck, they can even be adjusted electronically so that the front seat perfectly aligns with your lumbar region.

This is all very well and good and I applaud the engineers who have designed such marvels, but I still miss the old bench seats, one size fits all, one position is what you get and if you don’t like it then you adjust and not the seat. Call me old-fashioned; call me a dinosaur! I can take it; what I can’t take is not being able to reach over and hug my girlfriend.

Having said all that the best place by far to get a replacement front seat is at Cash-n-Carry. Why in the world would you pay top dollar for a new front seat when all you have to do it bring your wrench to our self serve salvage yard, take off a couple bolts, remove the old seat and install the new one? It’s that easy and because you believe in You Pull It salvage yards you save tons of cash on all used auto parts.

And listen: if you should ever come across a good bench seat for a ’72 Ford give me a call; there is no way I’m passing up the chance to live in the past whenever possible.