Decline
Even in the United States, the bucket seat has largely replaced the bench seat; the bucket is viewed as "sportier", and smaller cars have made the middle position less viable. For high performance cars, bucket seats help keep the driver in place during high accelerations. Some larger cars are still available with bench seats, as are some pickup and larger trucks, which would only be able to seat two if bucket seats were fitted.
Until recently, bench seats were still favored on large premium sedans, but even in this market they have become rare. The Toyota Avalon is among some of the newest models to drop availability of this feature, and models such as the Buick LeSabre replaced by new models such as the Buick Lucerne and Cadillac DTS in which it is offered as an option. They were standard equipment on the Ford Crown Victoria, Mercury Grand Marquis, and Lincoln Town Car until they were discontinued in 2011.
Read more about this topic: Bench Seat
Famous quotes containing the word decline:
“Or else I thought her supernatural;
As though a sterner eye looked through her eye
On this foul world in its decline and fall,
On gangling stocks grown great, great stocks run dry,
Ancestral pearls all pitched into a sty,
Heroic reverie mocked by clown and knave....”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“The decline of the aperitif may well be one of the most depressing phenomena of our time.”
—Luis Buñuel (1900–1983)
“But only that soul can be my friend which I encounter on the line of my own march, that soul to which I do not decline, and which does not decline me, but, native of the same celestial latitude, repeats in its own all my experience.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)