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Bring Back the Ergonomics: Cars Used to Have Swiveling Front Seats to Make Them Easier to Get In and Out of

Where's the progress, for ingress and egress?

By Rain Noe - November 4, 2019

in Cars

I've often bitched here that cars are not well-designed for getting in and out of. Well, back in the 1950's some unnamed Chrysler designers apparently felt the same way, and designed front seats that swiveled to ease ingress and egress.

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Here we see it offered as a new option on the 1959 Dodge Custom Royal, their top-of-the-line.

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Sister brand Plymouth got 'em too…

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…as did the 1960 and 1961 Chrysler Imperials and 300s.

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Competitor DeSoto had them in 1960…

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…but whatever ad-man they hired touted them not for ergonomics, but for women's dignity. The pencil skirts of the 1950s didn't make it easy for women to get in and out of cars.

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GM took note, and pushed it even further; the designers of one of their 1961 concept cars, the Buick Flamingo, said "Hell, let's make it turn all the way around." But neither the car nor the seat ever made it into production.

Rehearsing the backhanded compliments she's going to give Stella and Betty at the lady's luncheon

We're sure you want to see one in action, and the only footage we could find is buried within this 27-minute video that we all know you're too busy to watch. So we've cued it up to the exact moment it appears in use:

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Leno's car was one of the last Chryslers to offer the swivel-seat option. We're not sure why they went away, but we're guessing it had to do with poor sales.

By the way, for those that do have the time and are car buffs, the entire video is well worth a watch. Jay Leno's Garage is one of the more informative automotive history channels out there, and the car geek that's Jay's guest in this video knows everything there is to know about the 1961 Chrysler 300G.

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imperialist1960 -Virgil Exner Fan-

5 years ago

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This invention was introduced at the height of mechanization. Electronics were still to come - everything was made out of metal and was a true mechanism for the most part.

Swivel seats in their original Chrysler design format were connected to each corresponding door of the car by a cable. Opening the door actuated the cable. Actuation of the cable swiveled the seat next to the door outwards, so that the door action and seat action were always connected.

This was a fabulous development until the press was invited to test out some of the new 1960's at a closed course event. Interior door handles on cars of the time were far less standardized then they are today, and Chryslers had a lever coming out of the arm-rest that you pulled rearwards in order to open the car door while inside. Most of the bigger Chrysler cars that year also had all power windows, which were still somewhat new at the time in comparison to manual roll-down window cranks that had been around forever.

Story goes that two journalists were in a car and the passenger journalist decided to "roll down his window" (manually) in a car that had electric windows. The lever that he grabbed to do so was the door handle, and he did it as the car was making a hard left.

Centrifugal force being what it is, acted upon the heavy Chrysler door, whipping the door open, actuating the cable and seat, essentially acting as an ejection seat. Journalist got tossed out in front of everyone there that day, and Chrysler quickly scrambled to prevent this unintended consequence from happening again!

Note here that seat belts were still an option in 1960, and most people didn't habitually wear them.

Chrysler quickly struck the cable mechanism from manufacture at the seat supplier's assembly line. Some early 1960 cars had them installed with seats that were produced early in the production run before the cancellation order came - those cars had the cables laid under the carpet, but left disconnected, and are quite the find for a collector/restorer.

One of the other quirks of swivel seats was that they were marketed in some magazines as a significant improvement for women wearing skirts to exit a vehicle in a "lady-like manner". The ad that I recall could only have been concocted in the 1950's - so sexist - , but if you're oblivious to sexism as you author such marketing ad copy, the logic is nearly bulletproof!

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Juan Cano

5 years ago

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There's a place near my house that details cars, and the they had a Chrysler 300 in mint shape a few months back. The headlights are a work of art.

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Doug Schaefer

8 years ago

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GM offered swivel buckets in it's mid sized cars from '73-'77 and the spun 90 degrees:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LunwHzq9gx4/UDu2DKmB6_I/AAAAAAAAAzc/6uH2-HoUmPs/s1600/monte+c.jpg

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