[DeTomaso] Seat Recommendations Needed

Julian Kift julian_kift at hotmail.com
Fri Jun 29 12:55:20 EDT 2007


Mike/Mark,

I have c4 seats (the later 94-96 more rounded style) in the '74. My floor 
pans are standard and to get sufficient head room I had to remove the tracks 
and bolt the buckets in a fixed position directyly to the floor. They still 
don't allow me to use a helmet comfortably and I'm 6' 1". The beauty of the 
C4 seats is that they appear on Ebay constantly and there are plenty of 
options for covering them as a lot of the Corvette vendors offer off the 
shelf or customized replacement covers in various materials.

For the GT5 I purchased a set of Lotus Elise seats, although I have not 
gotten around to fittimng them yet. These are about the thinnest seats you 
will find anywhere, well at least of design that still retains some level of 
comfort. The newer Lotus Probax versions are apparently better still  in 
comfort level, however, you are talking $1,300 each for those. Lotus offer a 
custom trimming sevice as well and a number of the Elsie guys seem to 
upgrade to custom trimmed seats, so the OE seats are available on the Elise 
forums all the time. Mine have 1,500 miles on them and were $695 shipped to 
my door.

Larry Stock's Italian imported seats are still pretty bulky from what I saw, 
they probably sit higher than a stock Pantera seat.

Julian

>
>The C4 seats are not going to work for Chris.? They are higher than the
>stock seats.? With foam removed, they would only be back down to about 
>where
>the stock seats are.? To get comfortable, he is going to need to take
>additional steps.
>
>http://www.portata.com/panteraadventure/tall_man_conversions.htm
>

>>>Agreed.   Although Chris claims that he fit into his stock '73 just fine,
that was quite a few years ago, and having spent quite a bit of time working
on Panteras with him recently, I think it's fair to say that he would be
well-served by seats that are more comfortable than the stockers, and 
plus-sized
for
a man of his Sasquatchian dimensions.

Sadly, there seem to be few reasonable alternatives out there, and almost
anything will probably require modification.

There's an Italian manufacturer of very thin bucket seats that has a display
every year in Monterey; I think Larry Stock is talking about being a
distributor for them.   They have some very thin, fixed bucket seats, rather
like early
Mangusta seats, that would probably do the job just fine.   I can't remember
what the brand name is, but it's clearly Italian, like Torino or something
like that.   Can anybody else remember?

BTW, Chris' existing seats are just about the most beautiful reupholstered
stock seats I've ever seen.   They were done in the style of Ferrari
Daytona/Dino seats, in black with contrasting red stitching, with holes in 
the
red
leather.   Anybody who is more Italianate in stature, and has a red Pantera,
would
be well-served by these puppies I suspect.   Chris, why don't you post some
photos?

Mike

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