Benches aren't just for judges

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DRIVER'S SIDE DIATRIBE
By Al Vinikour    

The last front bench seat in a Chevrolet came in 2013. Most other brands stopped offering bench seats about the same time. Although a good deal of our population hasn’t known anything but bucket seats there are a lot of us dinosaur-dodgers who look back fondly at the comfort and convenience of bench seats as we went through our formative years.


I once had a “yute” (as Joe Pesci calls them) ask me if vehicles ever have a seating capacity beyond the seemingly-standard five (except for station wagons and SUVs, of course). I told him that until the advent of the sporty bucket seats, ALL vehicles were six-passenger sedans and even coupes; three in the front and three in the rear. Even when vehicles started offering bucket seats, most were an option and many still featured the transmission lever on the steering wheel column (or as it’s commonly known now, “three on the tree).

Bench seats were much-more practical when driving around with your girlfriend. “In the day,” girls used to sit close to their guys so that the guys could drive with their arm around his “lady.” Seat belts weren’t a consideration then so the only hindrance was if the vehicle had a floor shift – primarily a four-speed manual transmission (or “four on the floor”).

Depending on one’s perspective these things would get in the way of the person (the aforementioned “girl”) sitting astride of the shift mechanism. One way around this was to have the girlfriend shift gears while the boyfriend worked the clutch and used his left arm to drive and his right arm to “hold her tight.” (Though clumsier, many vehicles with center consoles still allowed someone to balance on top of it but not very comfortably. Many were the vehicles that had damaged console lids from someone either sitting on them or if they were open, pushing back on them and skewing the brackets.)



Though an almost dead pastime, cars with bench seats proved quite useful at places like drive-in movie theaters. It was always easy to spot the cars that had bucket seats because the couples usually sat in the back because of the interference of the center console. Same theory held true for visits to secluded parking spots. In my beloved home state of Indiana we didn’t have scenic lookouts like the top of Mulholland Drive but trust me when I tell you we weren’t parked there to take in Mother Nature’s sights, as it were.

Biological urges aside, bench seats provided ease of ingress and egress for people, especially the elderly. They didn’t have to undo themselves from a bucket seat and go through the “Oy” process of physically removing themselves from an unnatural position. Other than the unsportiness (if there is such a word, but then again, that’s never stopped me in the past) the only other major negative is that the other two potential occupants of the front seats had their legroom determined by the driver.

If he was a little guy with Lt. Dan legs then that meant he had to sit closer to the steering wheel. Since bench seats only slide forward or backwards then some poor schlub or two had to sit with their knees vying for space with their faces. Some luxury vehicles had four-, or even six-way power seats but again, the entire row was controlled by the driver’s-side button.
Most of my adult life has found me in vehicles with bucket seats.

Quite honestly I can’t recall the last vehicle I drove that didn’t have them and as the years go by my memory fades even more. Lately I’ve attributed my loss of memory to war injuries I suffered at Appomattox or through that horrible winter I spent with General Washington in Valley Forge. So, when I discovered that another part of my past is being retired it was bittersweet. It’s bad enough that today’s youth has missed out on so many things we enjoyed as youngsters like crawling under our desks to hide in the event of an atomic bomb or being subjected to TB patch tests at the beginning of each school year.

I’m fortunate in that I can occasionally write my column for personal use so I’d like to take advantage of that perk once more and hoist a bottle of Yoo Hoo to bench seats. Thank you for all you’ve taught me; thank you for providing transportation for the first several decades of my life; and above all, thanks for the memories. Rest in peace, old friends.