Decline
Even in the United States, the bucket seat has largely replaced the bench seat; the bucket is viewed as "sportier", and smaller cars have made the middle position less viable. For high performance cars, bucket seats help keep the driver in place during high accelerations. Some larger cars are still available with bench seats, as are some pickup and larger trucks, which would only be able to seat two if bucket seats were fitted.
Until recently, bench seats were still favored on large premium sedans, but even in this market they have become rare. The Toyota Avalon is among some of the newest models to drop availability of this feature, and models such as the Buick LeSabre replaced by new models such as the Buick Lucerne and Cadillac DTS in which it is offered as an option. They were standard equipment on the Ford Crown Victoria, Mercury Grand Marquis, and Lincoln Town Car until they were discontinued in 2011.
Read more about this topic: Bench Seat
Famous quotes containing the word decline:
“Where mass opinion dominates the government, there is a morbid derangement of the true functions of power. The derangement brings about the enfeeblement, verging on paralysis, of the capacity to govern. This breakdown in the constitutional order is the cause of the precipitate and catastrophic decline of Western society. It may, if it cannot be arrested and reversed, bring about the fall of the West.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“We can recognize the dawn and the decline of love by the uneasiness we feel when alone together.”
—Jean De La Bruyère (1645–1696)
“The chief misery of the decline of the faculties, and a main cause of the irritability that often goes with it, is evidently the isolation, the lack of customary appreciation and influence, which only the rarest tact and thoughtfulness on the part of others can alleviate.”
—Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)