Hot Seats

Tonight we were bopping around the Internet looking for a black vinyl driver’s seat for a 1974 Triumph Spitfire. Our search carried us to eBay, where there was a nice pair of tan hounds-tooth seats for a Spitfire. The opening bid price was $400. We thought that price was pretty steep—or at least a lot more than we expected to have to part with.

As often happens with the Internet, when we left the page with the Spitfire seats, another page popped up with all types of seats in all types of condition for sale. The prices being asked for some of them were even more amazing.

There was a pair of blue bucket seats for an AMC Pacer wagon that looked worn and torn, but the starting price was $275. A rear seat listed for a ’68-’70 Road Runner/Charger GTX/Super Bee (Did they all use the same seat?) had the stuffings come out the top and was also $275. And the Mopar B-body seat was a whole lot nicer than a pair of totally deteriorated ‘62-‘65 Chevy Impala bucket seats for only $350.

In all, there were dozens of old car seats for sale. Some of them were quite nice, but the majority were torn, tattered, baggy, saggy and stained. But apparently, even with all their obvious flaws, old car seats are a hot item these days and getting pretty pricey. We would say that the day of the $50 front seat is gone. Prices are definitely climbing and shipping probably runs more than $50 on any kind of seat.

For those of you who regularly visit salvage yards to stock up on parts to sell, keep your eyes peeled for old car seats. It seems like they are becoming a very hot commodity and if you can find some more unusual types of seats—such a front buckets for a rare muscle car—people will be lining up to buy them, even it there’s nothing left but the frame and the hardware.