Front bench almost toast
When Ford dropped its full-size Ford Crown Victoria and Mercury Grand Marquis sedans in 2011, the Chevrolet Impala became the only domestic car to offer a three-person- bench front seat.
Now, with the introduction of the 2014 Impala, the largest Chevy will only be available with a two-person front seat. The bench seat will join vent windows, carburetors and drum brakes in automotive lore.
Along with the demise of the bench seat, the column shifter will disappear as well.
Alot of us grew up sitting between our parents in the middle of that front seat, slipping and sliding around as the family sedan was driven around corners. In families with several children, sitting up front was the place of honour, and sometimes with this honour came the important task of reading the road map and relaying important route information long before global positioning systems.
The bench seat in automobiles was a natural progression from horse-drawn buggies, but it was a tight squeeze for three people in the front, especially with a floormounted gearshift lever. Shifting gears also proved somewhat awkward for both the driver and the passenger in the middle, as the driv- er had to manipulate the lever around the passenger’s legs. A close, chummy arrangement, to be sure.
By the late 1930s, automakers had devised the steering-column shift, which provided a great deal more room up front.
Although the front seat of coupes, coaches (two-door sedans) and convertibles was bisected and hinged forward to allow entry to the back seat, passengers in four-door cars such as sedans and station wagons sat on a one-piece cushioned slab.
This arrangement was the norm for several decades, until U.S. automakers came under foreign influence, especially British-made sports cars with bucket seats.
The initial Corvettes and Thunderbirds employed a bench seat but, by the early 1960s, both Corvette and T-Birds used buckets, as did some of the early “personal” cars, such as the Pontiac Grand Prix, Studebaker Hawk and Buick Riviera.
The seats were an easy way to market the sporty character of these cars, and it wasn’t long before most full-size cars could be had with this seating arrangement.
To go along with the individual seats, most cars with this layout featured floor shifts and centre consoles. Some performance-oriented cars grouped a set of gauges on the console, which could be difficult to read but was certainly a step up from the standard warning lights.
A hybrid arrangement was the split-bench, a full-width seat that was centrally bisected and could be adjusted individually. This was a great idea when the driver was fivefeet tall and the passenger was six, or vice versa. This became standard in cars with a full front seat, such as the Impala, and when the centre armrest/console was folded up, it could be used for a central rider, although it was not a roomy ride.
COMPETITIVE TEAMWORK
General Motors and Ford recently announced a joint venture in producing 9- and 10-speed automatic transmissions for their vehicles, which will offer increased fuel mileage and save the companies millions of dollars in research and development by working together. This is not the first time auto makers have worked in harmony. In 2002, Ford and GM co-operated to build an automatic transaxle that has been used in a variety of vehicles, from Saturns and Pontiacs and Impalas to Ford’s Edge, Taurus and Flex. Each automaker built the units in their own facility. Automatic transmissions were in their infancy when Oldsmobile in- troduced its Hydra-Matic Drive (first called Automatic Safety Transmission) in 1939. But by 1942, 200,000 GM cars were on the road with this shiftless gearbox. This robust transmission was found in Cadillacs, Pontiacs and Oldsmobiles, and was very popular. By 1949, GM had built its one millionth Hydra-Matic, and GM started offering it to several competitors who did not have the funds or technology to build their own.
Companies such as Kaiser, Hudson, and Nash built cars with the Hydra-Matic, as well as Lincoln. Ford’s two-speed transmission was not strong enough for the big Lincoln engine of the early 1950s, but operated fine with a Hydra-Matic.
Another Hydra-Matic customer was Britain’s Rolls-Royce, which used the transmission in its cars from 1952 until the late 1960s.
In a twist to all this, there was a fire in GM’s Hydra-Matic plant in Livonia, Mich., in1953, which left Caddy, Olds, and Pontiac looking for a substitute transmission until production could resume.
Until the plant was rebuilt later that year, Pontiacs were equipped with Chevy’s two-speed Powerglide, while Cadillac and Oldsmobile used Buick’s Dynaflow, also a two-speed unit. wheels@thestar.ca