We've assembled a collection of seats for your consideration, ranging in price from under $200 to more than $2,000. This isn't a comprehensive listing by any measure, but it does provide an overview of the many seats available and the manufacturers which offer them. (Please go to europeancarweb.com for a look at more aftermarket seats.)
When choosing the best seat, there are many issues to consider, from the size of your own rump and the width of the seat, to the seat's construction, reclining mechanism, padding, adjustment, mounting type, appearance and sliders.
You'll notice a category under each seat marked "homologation type." The relevant definition of homologate is "to give official recognition to a...car component, thus allowing it to be used in a race." When discussing seats, this generally means FIA (Federation Internationale de l'Automobile) homologation. The French take their wine and racing seriously, and few sanctioning bodies on earth have standards as strict or as well researched as the FIA. It's the most important motorsports sanctioning body worldwide, and its stamp of approval is recognized by the major sanctioning bodies in the United States.
The FIA's 8855-1999 test procedure means a seat was bolted to a test rig using the manufacturer's mounting locations and hardware, and with a test dummy strapped in place with a racing-type harness, the seat experiences three impacts: a rearward impact with a deceleration of 20-plus g lasting 50 milliseconds; a side impact with a deceleration of 15-plus g for 50 milliseconds; and a final rearward impact with a deceleration of 10-plus g with a duration of 50 milliseconds to simulate a multiple impact. Inspection for cracks or damage decides whether or not a seat passes.
SafetyMounting any aftermarket seat in a modern car may compromise the design and operation of the safety systems put in place by the manufacturer. Of particular concern are cars with modern multi-airbag supplemental restraints and those with safety belts designed to work only with the factory seats. Manufacturers spend huge dollars designing, testing and implementing these systems, and even small changes will likely affect their performance. You have been warned.
Even more important in the world of aftermarket seating is the method seats are attached to the car. Poor fabrication, inferior hardware or simple bad design are good ways to ensure that even the highest-dollar composite shell seat will fail to provide adequate levels of safety in a collision. We're sorry that detailing the specifics of correctly mounting the seats in this guide is impossible. However, there are standards in place, and a small amount of research goes a long way. Remember this when you mount seats in your car.
ConstructionSeat structures made with tubular steel are the most commonly found and cheapest to produce. Tubular steel seats offer a good strength-to-cost ratio but suffer weight penalties. Also, it has been argued that steel can result in greater concentrated pressures on the body in a crash.
Shell-type seats tend to be lighter than steel tube seats and spread the force of the impact over a larger surface area, as the shell is the structure. Shell-type seats are made from aluminum or sandwiched composites like fiberglass, Kevlar, carbon-fiber or a carbon-fiber/Kevlar mix.
Aluminum seats are a longtime favorite of circle track and drag racers, although they're found in road racing cars as well. Aluminum offers high strength, it's fairly lightweight, and it has the ability to absorb tremendous energy through deformation without failure.
Fiberglass has the cheapest material cost of any of the composites and thus is used in many seats. Because fiberglass is not as strong inch for inch as carbon-fiber or Kevlar, more of it needs to be used to get the same strength, meaning the end product is often heavier.
Kevlar is extremely strong but not extremely stiff, but it's the best of the composites at absorbing energy. Carbon-fiber is very light, very stiff and strong, but it's expensive and brittle compared to Kevlar. When done right, carbon-fiber/Kevlar fabric can blend the strength of carbon-fiber with the energy absorption properties of Kevlar, yielding ideal protection.
Seat design, fabric layup, resin and operator skill all have tremendous bearing on the quality of any composite seat.
Race Seats: Mounting By the RulesWith as many sanctioning bodies as there are seats to choose from, how to mount a seat in your competition car can get confusing. For a synopsis of regulations from the major sanctioning bodies, log on to europeancarweb.com.
The Goldilocks TestTo offer some insight into how well the seats in our guide fit different body types, we gathered a group of five testers with different waist sizes and included their comments. Many seat manufacturers have started to tackle the sizing problem in different ways. Most simply offer a variety of models in varying shapes. Cobra, Sparco and several others, however, offer seats in varying widths. Sparco's EVO series is available in three widths. Cobra's Evolution, Imola and Suzuka are available in both standard and GT (wide) widths, though all Cobra seats in this guide are standard width.