A bucket seat is a seat contoured to hold one person, distinct from bench seats which are flat platforms designed to seat multiple people. Bucket seats are standard in fast cars to keep riders in place when making sharp or quick turns. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the name derives from the seat "partly resembling a bucket in shape".
Racing vehicles usually have only one bucket seat. Vehicles sold to the general public often have two bucket seats in the front compartment, and may contain more in a rear compartment. Commercial aircraft now have bucket seats for all passengers.
Automobile bucket seats first came into use after World War II on European small cars, due to:
- Their relatively small size compared to a bench seat; and
- Lack of seating room for a middle passenger, due to the presence of a floor-mounted shifter and parking brake lever.
The first motor sports and fast road bucket seats in Europe were manufactured by Colin Folwell, who subsequently founded Corbeau Seats in the UK in 1963
The bucket seat trend was especially apparent in sporty cars, particularly two-seater sports cars, most of which were manufactured in European nations.
Read more about Bucket Seat: Use in American Cars, Rear Seating, Third Row Seating
Famous quotes containing the words bucket and/or seat:
“Dear fellow-artist, why so free
With every sort of company,
With every Jack and Jill?
Choose your companions from the best;
Who draws a bucket with the rest
Soon topples down the hill.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly,
nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the
scornful.
But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he
meditate day and night.
And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that
bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither;
and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.”
—Bible: Hebrew Psalm I (l. I, 1–3)