Most uncomfortable car seats...

[stripped fred]

I'm getting on well with my new daily 406. The only thing that lets it down is that I find the seat a bit uncomfortable. They are quite squashy in a proper French way and although they are not terrible I need to try and find some type of back support to improve them. I find that an uncomfortable car seat can completely put you off an otherwise decent car. The worst car I had for this was an e30 which had leather seats that offered very little side support so you tended to slide off at each corner. You had to tense your arse muscles to try and stay in the correct position. I do have a dodgy back so this could be contributing. Also, the car has done 184k so the seat has seen a lot of bum action. Maybe I need to look for a Saab or Volvo as these cars have a reputation for excellent seats. What are other shiter's experiences? Have you ever had to get rid of your prized motor because of this?

[Volksy]

Rover 200/25 give me chronic back ache.

New Corsa's and VW Crafters give me cramp in my right buttock. 

[Ditchfinder General]

a lot of bum action

Fnar fnar.

[2MB]

Only car I feel like I could drive indefinitely without pain or numbness is a w201/w124 merc with cloth seats. There may be others but I think they're better than volvos and saabs of a similar age personally

[2MB]

Completely got the wrong end of the stick there... Don't know what the worst ones are really

[Stanky]

Kia Rio Mk1 and 1.5s have terrible seats, they have no side support at all and are sort of 'domed' so anything you put on the passenger seat just rolls off. The backrest is also impoosible to get into the right position, you're either cuddling the steering wheel or looking at the headlining.

 

The Almera standard seats were much the same, but I bagged a pair from a GTI and they are about a millionty times better

[Pete-M]

Å koda Octavia seats once they've done 80+k are often terrible.

 

The cloth seats in the Ford Cougar are also awful but the worst seats of all are the electric leather top spec ones in a Granada Mk3.

[stripped fred]

Only car I feel like I could drive indefinitely without pain or numbness is a w201/w124 merc with cloth seats. There may be others but I think they're better than volvos and saabs of a similar age personally

Not at all, good to hear which cars rate highly for comfort too.

[stripped fred]

Another thought, it's no good saving money by running a cheapo car if you spend the savings on chiropractor bills!

[carlo]

Yes, 406s weren't as good as previous Peugeot efforts, especially the Coupe.  Best seats I've ever experienced were 305GTX & 505 GTi 82-86, absolutely sumptuous.  One reason I couldn't get on with the Rover 75 was the seats, especially the leather ones.

 

Worst seats?  Citroen BX standard ones, gave me backache after 2 minutes even at the age of 25.  The sports version had possibly too much lumber support.  

[mercrocker]

Mk1 Mini - fucking torture, even on my way-back-then nimble 17 year old frame. You could have made a backrest out of rusty coathangers and it would still have been an improvement. Everything I have owned since has been a vast improvement - even the Zephyr 6 that had 2 inches of play in the rusty floor mounts and a broken squab.

 

Plus on the Merc - I have found all Germanic thrones to be a lot more comfortable than they look and initially feel. Even the pared-down 190E ones are 400 milers, no problem.

[Vantman]

Mazda MX6,the only car I have sold because the seats were so uncomfortable.

[rantingYoof]

Å koda Octavia seats once they've done 80+k are often terrible.

 

This. I test drove a 2005 Octavia and the seats were tiny. I'm a bit lanky - 6ft 2 - but there was no lower-leg support at all, and after 10 minutes driving I had a back-ache.

 

I have spent a lot of my life driving larger waft-mobiles, a lot of Volvos and Saabs, so unfortunately I'm a little sensititve to seats, and what someone else finds okay I tend to find simply DREADFUL, simply because the seat doesn't envelope me and whisper sweet-somethings in my ear, the way a Swedish-seat does. For example, Vauxhall leather seats are quite bench-like and there's not much envelopage when you settle back into them. To a normal human being, they are largely fine. I am not normal, sadly.

 

In fact I was pretty troll-faced because the tight-arse who bought my S60 specified the black leather and specified that the driver's seat be electrically controlled but then chose to NOT OPT FOR THE HEATED SEAT OPTION AT ALL WARRRRRGHHHHGHH WTF.

 

Those two blank buttons on the dash will induce an OCD-twitch, you watch.

 

 

And if I retrofit such a gadget the outcome will be less favourable than if I were to fly over Turkish airspace, so ain't gonna happen.

[MarvinsMom]

Nissan k12 micra, the seats in those are dreadful, its a 2-3 hour run home from work, and by the time I'd get out of the car I was ready to commit genocide. the seats in the mark 1 Nissan x-trail were I thought pretty shitty too.

 

Skoda Octavia seats are shit even when the car Is brand new, and I dislike anything that's German, vag shite and BMW especially. I did quite like the seats in a friends old W201 190e, they were ok.

 

seats what I did like? Jaguar's xj6, s-type and x-type, most of mgr's modest offerings, Toyota Camry, and the late mark 2 ford sierra and mark 3 Granada. the very bestest seats I've sat in though were in the rover 820 coupe. they seemed to fit me like a glove.

[Magnificent Rustbucket]

It probably varies by individual, especially if like me, you have long term back problems.

 

The worst seats I have sat on are definitely the Nissan S13 200SX I owned long ago. Uncomfortable from the off, I found them positively crippling in under half an hour. They seriously tempered my enjoyment of the car.

 

I can never get comfortable in a Mercedes; for me the seats they have are dreadful. The second most uncomfortable car I have travelled in was my brother's W140. The seats in that were multi-adjustable electrically in a seemingly limitless array of positions. All of them were terrible. After one journey I was in so much pain when I arrived I could not get out of the car and had to go home! Even the Nissan didn't do that to me, so maybe the Merc was worse! The seats in the old W123 Mercedes are really very springy indeed. They're just too boingy by far and just collapse if you sit on the wrong bit of them. It is most disconcerting.

 

The best seats for me are in older Volvos (I haven't been in a modern Volvo). My own car (late Jaguar XJ40) also has excellent seats, but is unfortunately compromised in absolute comfort terms by having a sunroof. There just isn't enough headroom for one in a Jag.

[Craig the Princess]

The Green allegro we have because both diaphragms have burst and you are sitting on a think layer of foam on top of a washing up bowl.

 

Class 317 secondman seats are dire too, far too low and you can feel each spring.

[Sloth in a bowl]

Rear seats in a Porsche 944, even my short 5' 2" wife had issues with head and leg room.

[RayMK]

Fiat Tipo 1.4ie.  The seats are in good condition and look comfortable, but 1 hour is enough to give me backache whether I'm driving or being a passenger.  It's not just me.  My son and daughter also develop lower back pain quite soon into any journey.  We keep the Tipo because it works and isn't going chronically rusty.   At the other end of the comfort and looks scale, my 1961 Reliant Regal has seats that look too small and are as basic as a 1950s Woolworths camping chair, yet they don't give me any aches at all even after several hours i.e. the time it takes to do 40 miles.

[pompei]

03 plate Mondia Ghia. Sold it after a week as the seats were torture.

 

G reg Escort  -  first company car. Could only stand it with use of foam runner and a bead cover.

 

Most comfortable?  Citroen BX, GS and CX.  Saab 93 and 95. Fiat Uno was pretty good too. I think Fiat used to mention in their advertising that they were designed by osteopaths.

 

Most surprising?  Fiat 500  -  drove it to Italy and back and whilst the vinyl got sticky it never gave me any stiffness (fnarr)

[Mike D]

Those seats haven't got an electric lumbar adjuster somewhere up the side have they?

[Lacquer Peel]

[dean36014]

Not a car but a truck, got a new daf cf prime mover and the seats are like sitting on a garden bench they are that hard. Plus they have loads of lumbar built in higher up the back rest that feels like its trying to bend my back backwards. Not good when I have to drive 350 miles a night and I've had two previous back ops. got occy health looking into it and possible having a new seat fitted in the bloody thing

[fordperv]

I've found Vauxhalls from the 90s onwards uncomfortable

[John F]

Based on my own subjective experiences:

 

1993 'K' Renault Clio 1.4RT: narrow seat back, massive seat base, unmistakably designed for pear-shaped birds.

 

1993 'L' Mondeo 1.8i: praised by Clarkson at the time as 'a real driver's car'. Yeah mate, if the 'real driver' has an enormous arse perhaps... with my comparatively skinny rump I found myself being flung from side to side across the tundra-like expanse of seat base if any attempt was made to progress swiftly* on winding roads. Fucking useless seats, very much in keeping with the rest of the car.

 

2003 VW Bora: been passenger in one of these a couple of times. Hateful hard seats all round, front seat side 'wings' on the backrest and seat base side bolsters are far too narrow and stick into the sides of your back. Very uncomfortable to sit in for any amount of time. Best avoided.

 

Most comfortable seats of evah: the Recaro seats fitted to my old 1994 Vauxhall Cavalier SRi 16v. I drove from near Geneva to northern England in one go, stopping only for fuel & ferry. When I arrived I felt so relaxed I went straight out to the pub.

[Noel Tidybeard]

Bad

• poojoe 406, 208
• poolo 2011
• escrote mk5
• primera p12
• jazz mk2
• "ford" recaros

Good

• maestro/montego
• vectra b (dual lumbar)
• civic spaceship
• jazz mk1
• mundeno
• 325i 2005
• puglit 106, 205, 306
•  

[vulgalour]

Ledbury Maestro is probably the worst I've ever had to put up with for any amount of time.  They got so bad for me I sold the car, never had back pain like it in anything else.

 

Xantia seats are an odd one, they're not inherently uncomfortable but combined with the seating position I found myself constantly having to stretch for everything, tolerated them much longer than the Maestro but eventually replaced them with Peugeot 405 seats which were immensely gorgeous and lovely.

 

90s BMWs are bad too.  They might as well be Brutalist architecture for all they resemble any sort of human body part, I'm sure they were designed to carry bricks rather than buttocks.

[stripped fred]

I don't think the comfort of a car's seats are the main buying criteria for most shiters but certainly something worth considering. The seats in my 2001 A4 were firm and had a very short seat base but I never found them uncomfortable.

 

I suppose at our end of the market what was once a comfortable seat could now be saggy and worn and may have lost its support, unless it's an Octavia apparently in which they start out shit and get worse as time goes on!

 

I think I might try some type of aftermarket support for the 406 or just live with it as they aren't terrible. We'll see. The seats in my 1993 astra are OK and also the mr2 seats don't cause me much trouble.

[steve_earwig]

I must be in the wrong place as the most comfortable seats I've ever sat on are in a ...Peugeot 406

 

Maybe I haven't driven enough cars but even the seats in my old high miler 2.1td were fine and I drove to England and back in my present 406 without issue. I really wouldn't fancy doing it in the toyoyo, which is like sitting on a dead dog by comparison.

 

Admittedly previous experience has been all sorts of shite, so it probably wouldn't be fare to compare seats that are in the preliminary throws of collapse.

 

The only thing I should say is that, after rupturing a disk in my lower back a few years ago, the legs out in front of you driving position in the 406 doesn't suit it at all, and getting in and out of such a low car was agony when my back was at it's worst. But if I could get the Pug seats into the toyoyo...

[stripped fred]

1993 'K' Renault Clio 1.4RT: narrow seat back, massive seat base, unmistakably designed for pear-shaped birds.

Might have to consider one of those for the Mrs next time then!

[stripped fred]

I must be in the wrong place as the most comfortable seats I've ever sat on are in a ...Peugeot 406

 

Maybe I haven't driven enough cars but even the seats in my old high miler 2.1td were fine and I drove to England and back in my present 406 without issue. I really wouldn't fancy doing it in the toyoyo, which is like sitting on a dead dog by comparison.

 

Admittedly previous experience has been all sorts of shite, so it probably wouldn't be fare to compare seats that are in the preliminary throws of collapse.

 

The only thing I should say is that, after rupturing a disk in my lower back a few years ago, the legs out in front of you driving position in the 406 doesn't suit it at all, and getting in and out of such a low car was agony when my back was at it's worst. But if I could get the Pug seats into the toyoyo...

Perhaps they came in different flavours? Maybe I should see what I can get secondhand to replace them? Mine are electrically adjustable which I was very impressed with as never had a car with this level of sophistication before. They're very squashy, for want of a better word.