Bucket Seat - Use in American Cars

Use in American Cars

For decades, American cars were typically equipped with bench seats, which permitted three-passenger seating. The advent of compact cars and specialty vehicles such as the Ford Thunderbird in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and sporty versions of both standard-sized and compact cars, accelerated the bucket-seat trend in domestic cars around 1960.

By 1962, more than 1 million U.S. built cars were factory equipped with bucket seats; often, these were fitted with a center console containing a gear shifter and possibly other features between the seats. The popularity of the bucket seat grew with the advent of sporty compact cars (or "pony cars") such as the Ford Mustang. With the introduction of subcompact-sized automobiles such as the Chevrolet Vega and Ford Pinto, bucket seats were used due to the lack of seating room and the use of floor-mounted levers for the gear shifter and parking brake.

While bucket seats continued to gain popularity among compact and sports cars, the traditional bench seat, which could seat up to three people abreast, continued to be the preferred front seating arrangement in larger cars and trucks until the late 1990s. By the 1990s, a few mid- and full-sized domestic cars, as well as trucks, offered bucket seat-console front seating options, for customers who wanted a sports-car image or personalized feel to their car.

Recently, as U.S. cars were designed smaller in order to meet increasingly stringent fuel economy standards as well as intense competition from imported cars (particularly Japanese models), bucket seats became the de facto front configuration among domestic cars. As of 2010, only full-sized sedans and pickup trucks retain the front bench seat.