I remember my family piling into my mom’s 1963 Oldsmobile 98, with its huge bench seats covered in plastic! Both the front and back seats were benches, so you could fit up to 6 people in the car. Most cars had benches back then, with only sporty cars featuring the much cooler bucket seats.
Now bench seats will be only a fond memory, as GM has announced that it will no longer offer the bench seat option on 2014 and later Chevrolet Impalas.
Perhaps you didn’t even realize that any manufacturer was still putting bench seats into their passenger cars…evidently even some Impala buyers were unaware of that, since just 10% of purchasers chose the 3-passenger bench option.
So those benches will be gone from passenger cars starting next year, but if you’d like to relive the memories of one writer who understood what the bench seats meant to teenagers, check out the Wastegate Blog here.