And, yet, the cars of the '60s and '70 were able to accommodate a wide range of body type with comfort. I gotta say, guys, I hear what you’re saying but with the wide range of adjustability possible, and because the cars of old were comfortable and the newer cars are all uncomfortable, I’m having a hard time accepting the need to design for some “average” body type as a reason modern seats are so terrible. If what you say were true, the cars of my youth would have also been uncomfortable, but they were not.
The range if body types ( look at your yearbook pictures) was no where near as great as it is today. The average person is a lard butt and the extremes easily go from 90 lbs to 300 in any seat in a car. You can have both safe and comfortable seats.
But, when today’s overweight and physically challenged person brings his own illnesses into the car with him, he brings his pain too and car makers can do just so much. We are getting older and BIGGER as drivers as our driving life increases with more old age problems that go with it.
No, by a long shot, the average driver in the 60s was more fit and " compliant " then today’s drivers. More auto transmissions, better climate control and bigger cars put driving within the reach of more of us who never tried to drive cross country before and spend 8 hours in a car. Today’s cars have improved, but driver physicality has gone backwards.
" If what you say were true, the cars of my youth would have also been uncomfortable, but they were not."
But…in your youth, you (and I, and many of the other…older…guys in this forum) didn’t have the aches & pains that come with middle age and advanced age. I don’t recall any significant back pain or other physical pains until I was in middle age. Now…yikes!
When I was in my 20s & 30s, I could have sat on an unpadded wooden church pew for 8 hours w/o feeling any pain.
Now, 20 minutes on some sofas and on some car seats can induce sciatica.
Point well made, VDC.
Re: the church pews, I think they were designed to make sinners suffer. And kneelers… oh, God, kneelers! What suffering doth thou endure!!
The OP stated that the seat did not adjust which is wrong. Someone probably showed her how to adjust the height of the seat and we never hear from her again.
Older cars had bench seats ( and not that long ago) that adjusted forward back and maybe the back rest tilted with no lumbar support, just like old couches. Now, buckets are the norm with lumbar and height adjustments etc… Even with all the safety mandates, car seats are sooooo much more adjustable and comfortable there is no comparison. I don’t think early car seat engineers could even spell kinesiology. The required anchoring has nothing to do with seat comfort. Car seats are as comfortable as any recliner you can buy with the only restriction being size and weight which is strictly a car maker decision to provide more room and capacity for more people or cargo elsewhere. ALL the seats in one of our cars is more comfortable and adjustable then any seat in our house including my wife’s mucho expensive semi recliner from Sweden. IMHO, , after offering full adjustability and heating, the only thing left is massage capability. Then, we will have a debate about falling asleep while driving.
@dagosa–I find the seats in today’s cars less comfortable than the older cars with bench seats. In 1992 Consumer Reports tested a new Oldsmobile 88, a Buick Roadmaster, and a Mercury Grand Marquis. CR also rounded up a 1952 Buick Roadmaster for comparison and CR found the 40 year old Buick had more comfortable seats. About that time, we owned a 1993 Oldsmobile 88 with all the bells and whistles including the power seat. The seats seemed comfortable for a short drive, but no matter how I adjusted the power seats and lumbar support, I would get leg cramps after 50 miles or so. We actually were more comfortable on long trips driving our 1990 Ford Aerostar. The institution where we were employed before we retired had Honda Civic Hybrids in the fleet. I was assigned one of these cars a couple of times to drive to a conference and I found the car very uncomfortable. My wife was on the road quite a bit doing recruiting trips and after a couple of trips, asked to be assigned to another make of vehicle. For our personal transportation we have a 2011 Sienna minivan and a 2003 4Runner SUV; We like the seats and seating position much better than any car we tested. If minivans and SUVs go out of production, we will switch to a pickup truck.
@Triedaq
So you like the seats (buckets) in your 2011 and 2003 more then any car you have tested today but still prefer bench seats ? The problem with bench seats up front is…you can’t adjust them ( what little they do) without adjusting the entire seat. And most people want all that adjustability. A short driver takes a long legged passenger right under the dashboard. How would you like to be a passenger when your wife drives ? If anything like us, my wife is a foot shorter then I and when she drove my bench seat truck, I suffered dearly. What you say may be exactly true for you when you drive, but the buying public has long preferred adjustable bucket seats for the driver. They prefer the form fit comfort like a recliner over a couch, their potential for more adjustments and are also safer in accidents, not to mention providing copious amounts of storage in the center console and all those cup holders. 
I submitt too that your bench mark, a 93 Olds 88 may not have been a paragon of seating comfort compared to say…Volvo seats. Let me add that there are a lot of crappy bucket seats out there too, don’t get me wrong.it’s just I feel the potential for comfort is greater for more drivers.
Try sitting in my daughter’s '05 Mustang, my oldest son’s '96 Camaro or '07 Dodge, or my youngest son’s '13 Camaro and the words “comfy seating” will never cross your mind.
They’re all on a par with a plastic lawn chair and have about as much padding.
The seats in one of my old Subarus were not much better. Matter of fact, at one point I decided to rip them out and threw them in the dumpster. A local guy had an old Chevy Citation he was about to scrap after many years of sitting and said I could have the buckets out of that. The interior was immaculate (the only part of the car worth a darn) and they bolted in with very little modification.
Night and day difference on the comfort level.
Guess enough didn’t love those old vinyl bench seats.
the cougars that we have had, all had seats with great adjustability.
being able to change your position frequently and significantly helped greatly to ease the pain of long rides.
on the other hand, the bench seat in my truck is fairly comfortable too, if I pull it all the way forward.
getting in and out of the cougars was difficult and I risked throwing my back out if I wasn t careful doing so.
the truck seat is the same height as my butt, and its easy to enter and exit.
the jeep is ok. not much adjustment, but it has good lumbar support and is well suited to my body.
can deal with most seats, entering and exiting is the hard part with low cars for me
If she has the electric seats, the height and seat angle are adjustable. I had the same problem when I bought my Camry. I quickly found the angle adjust to level out the seat bottom.
@dagosa–The cars I owned with bench seats provided more comfortable seating even when I was riding with a driver with shorter legs than the cars I have driven or ridden in recently. I think the reason is that yesterday’s cars had seats that sat higher off the floor of the car. The 1965 Rambler that I owned had a split bench seat and the Rambler seats were much more comfortable than the 1971 Ford Maverick Grabber that replaced the Rambler and had bucket seats.
I agree with @ok4450 about the Mustang seats and other sporty cars. My son’s wife brought a 1995 Mustang into their marriage. She developed back trouble and could not drive the car, so that became the car our son drove. He made the 350 mile trip up to our home for a funeral in the Mustang instead of bringing their newer minivan and found the trip very tiring. He finally sold the Mustang and replaced it with a 2001 Chevrolet S-10 pickup truck so that they would have vehicles that his wife could drive. He finds the S-10 more comfortable for his half hour commute to his job than the Mustang because of the higher seating position.
I know that many cars get better mileage than I do on our Sienna or 4Runner, but I have served my sentence in the Ford Maverick and Ford Tempo and the Oldsmobile 88. I’ll pay for the reduced mileage to have comfortable seats and a good driving position.
I guess I’m lucky then…
The seats in my Highlander and wifes Lexus are VERY comfortable. I also find the seats in my 4runner also comfortable. Tough to compare now since that vehicle has a little under 270k miles. But they are still comfortable.
The only seats I found uncomfortable were from Dodge. Their Omni was pathetic. Last year I went to the car show and was able to sit in many vehicles. The Durango seats were very uncomfortable. The seats wrapped…and the wrap hit me square in the shoulders. To sit back I had to round my shoulders which hurt even more.
I don’t have any physical aliments…I guess if you do then you’re more picky about comfort.
I like firm seats and the seats in our 2003 4Runner I find very comfortable–even better than the seats in our 2011 Sienna. Some people adjust to different car seats better than other people do. Just before we retired, my wife made the trip from eastern Indiana to Washington D.C. for our institution and she had a Dodge Avenger from the fleet and didn’t think it was too bad as far as comfort was concerned. In 2013, we took a trip to the New England states–flew to Albany, New York and rented a car for the trip through Vermont and New Hampshire. The car we rented was a Dodge Avenger and I really developed leg cramps in that car. I thought about trying to find MikeInNH and seeing if he would trade his 4Runner for the Dodge for a week so I could enjoy the drive. We did enjoy the trip–stayed in Bennington, Vermont and made side trips from there.
for a seat bottom that is too long for one’s leg bending angle…try a pillow.
The kind you buy at the Target for your kitchen chairs.
this changes the resulting angle at the knee/thigh/calf area and the numbness should end.
I found cars of old very uncomfortable. But I’m skinny and I bounced all over without any support at all. If I were wider I might find modern seats too constricting, but I’m not and I don’t. Sometimes I find the bottom cushions too short to give my thighs good support and I often can’t get the steering wheel where I want it.
You older guys must be suffering from memory loss. I had a 55 Chevy and a 57 Olds when I was a teenager. I did not have back trouble and could sit in that unpadded church pew, or unpadded seats in school all day without any back pain, but one hour in either car did cause me back pain. Fortunately I rarely ever sat in them for an hour or more.
Later I got a 66 Dodge that I made a lot of cross country trips in and a little back ache was par for the course then too. The only vehicles that I have had that did not cause even a little pain were a 90 Dodge Colt base model and my 97 Nissan Pick Up (bench seat). I have never found a seat with power lumbar support that could be made comfortable, the lumbar support is on the sides and too high up to support the lumbar, they just rabbit punch the kidneys.
Most cars I have been able to make comfortable for long trips with by using an aftermarket foam lumbar support and a thin gel/memory foam cushion.
As for the leg issue, you can thank the writer Brock Yates for that. He campaigned long and hard for many years to get more “thigh support” in cars. I guess he had a lot of influence. He also campaigned for moving the steering wheel to “arms length” away from the driver, along with the smaller diameter and thicker padding. Some of the “arms length” is due to airbags though.
BTW, my butt isn’t much wider now than it was when I was a teen, but it sags a little more.
TMI Keith. Too much information.
I’ve never had much of a problem with bench seats. My old Plymouth Roadrunner had a bench seat and I routinely took it on out of state trips with no issues; usually 5 to 6 hours with no stops.
Back in the day I even drove a 1960 Chrysler New Yorker straight through from the L.A. area of CA to OK; about 1500 miles in one shot. Granted, I was worn clean out and glassy eyed after 28 hours but the bench seat was never an issue.