When I was growing up in the 60's as one of 5 kids, a bench seat in the front and a column gear change was the only way of getting 2 adults and 5 kids in the car. 3 in the front and 4 in the back.
I miss bench seats.
- Thread starter JunkdrawerDog
- Start date
I read that Oldsmobile ditched all their front bench seats in an effort to 'modernize' the marque's image.
....and that move resulted in those customers switching to Buicks!
....and that move resulted in those customers switching to Buicks!
My first car was a 1936 Ford 5 window coupe. It had a narrow bench seat and it was very cozy with long handled gear shift in the middle. Wish I never sold it. I rescued it from a junk yard and restored it. It was beautiful.
Last car I had with a bench seat was a 74 Plymouth Fury III. Loved those little kid car seats that fit over the backrest in the middle of the front seat.
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- Mar 10, 2021
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- 258
Seats used to be comfortable also. Now there all hard as rocks.
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- Dec 7, 2022
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Me too. My old Ford pickups were bench seat. My girlfriend now wife slid over all the time. My neighbor used to refer to this situation as the "2 headed driver".
Now we talk about getting a bench seat so the two little dogs can sit there
Same here. Those bench seats were responsible for a lot of kids being in this world back when we were young. Now they are just a resting place for the little dogs we take with us on trips.
Seems they should refer to those cars as "6-window" as there are "1/4 windows" behind each door.
2 windshileds+2 door windows+2 quarter windows=6, no?
The windshield doesnt count..
Our special order '65 442...
4wd
$50 site donor 2026
miss bench seats with your girlfriend riding close & your best friend riding shotgun! (+one on the rack behind us
) …
) …Dad had a '70 442 for a while. The previous owner ordered it with a bench seat as well. A big 455 under the hood.
After '70 compression dropped and they screwed up the ignition curve to make 'em run hotter at idle. Ported vacuum advance is for smoggers. No thanks. But you do need to recurve those high compression, iron headed V8's to run on crappy CA wannabe "Premium". Less total and vacuum advance, and don't bring the advance in too fast or they rattle like crazy.
Plus people put Mickey Mouse cams in 'em and mess up everything. Your Dad's Oldsey was a stroker vs the bigger bore of most large engines. They don't like to rev but from off-idle to about 4400 RPM they had 500 ft/lb of tire shredding torque. Great street engines!
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We had to add a can of MOROSO octane booster to every tankful to keep it from rattling and getting hot.
What curve are you running? Does it rattle? Start with less vacuum advance. How much advance is in your distributer?
Cannot answer that question. Car is long gone.
I hate it when that happens! There's a guy who really wants our 442. It has 96K original miles and always garaged. Wifey's father bought it new. Zero rust CA car, made in Fremont.
Believe it or not, I bought that car for him for in 1980? for $900. It was sitting in a front yard in Ft. Wayne, IN. Owner said no one in his family wanted to drive it as it drank gasoline. He was the original owner. We played around with it for 2 or 3 years. Dad bought a Stage 1 kit from Kenne-Bell. It consisted of a big Carter AFB, an open element air cleaner, a set of headers and two turbo mufflers with huge inlet/outlets. It was a beast before all that but after installing the kit...Man! We spent a lot of time on back roads doing burnouts. After he tired of it, he gave it to my younger cousin who needed a car to get to work.
To bring this full circle... here's my blue C-10 that I mentioned in first post, along with another of Dad's Oldsmobiles and his work van. Also, the 21 yr old JunkdrawerDog with my Nova, bench seat and 3 on the floor.
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