The 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Has Some Of The Best Seats Of Any Car Right Now

These are the standard GT seats on the 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray. There is also an optional Competition seat geared for track driving that has more aggressive side bolsters and provisions for a four-point harness. (Credit: Chevrolet)

The Chevrolet Corvette used to have some of the lightest seats in the industry, which matters a lot for sports cars because every last ounce counts.

So why did engineers decide to give the highly anticipated 2014 Corvette new seats that weigh 11 pounds more?

“We felt like we had to do it,” says Tadge Juechter, chief engineer for the C7 Corvette, “because we were so heavily critiqued for the previous seats.”

The current industry trend is for cars to shed mass, and generally speaking Chevy is like other automakers in this regard. But the new Corvette weighs more overall than the model it replaces, and the seats account for 12 percent of its extra 90 pounds.

Juechter is satisfied, though, that the iconic sports car gets heavier to get better, with the seats being a case in point.

Though they had been among the lightest in the market, the previous seats also were among the weakest. They would flex and creak during spirited driving. A complaint that has plagued Corvette interiors for nearly 50 years is that they feel cheap, and the seats are partly to blame.

So when designing seats for the 2014 model, the engineers started from scratch.

“The whole seat is a big, single, cast piece of aluminum,” Juechter says. “Then all of the joints are through-bolted so that the whole thing ties together as a rigid body.”

The beefier frame adds mass. But to help offset this, the new seats incorporate more parts made of magnesium, which has two-thirds the density of aluminum.

The result is a strong and supportive seat that didn't budge during a three-hour test drive of the C7 Corvette on the serpentine roads of Southern California. It also felt well cushioned and contoured, with enough compliance for longer journeys to be comfortable.

A noteworthy benefit of the added rigidity has to do with the head rests. The seats in the 2014 Chevy Corvette won’t flex much during rear-end collisions, which allows for the head rests to be positioned further back, while still complying with new whiplash safety standards.

In contrast, seats on most other new cars flex back during rear-end crashes, which means that their head rests must protrude further forward to compensate, often to the point where they can poke against the back of the head during everyday driving. This can make it difficult for some people (me included) to get comfortable behind the wheel