Three seats in the front row
11/16/2015
It's actually a good thing, because everyone always wants to sit in the front. With three seats in the front row, you are certainly the king and it is probably also much easier as a father of two children. And there have always been three front seats. For Americans and some Europeans in the fifties and sixties, a wide front bench seat was ideal for accommodating three passengers instead of just two, and it was not without reason that the gearshift was usually mounted on the steering wheel or even buttons were installed for gear selection.
But there were also other attempts, such as the Ferrari 365 P from 1966, a prototype with center steering and two passenger seats to the left and right of the driver.
The McLaren F1 of the nineties was configured in the same way and at least made it to small series production.
The three-seat concept was much more successful at the French car manufacturer Matra. Both the Matra-Simca Bagheera and the Talbot Matra Murena were mid-engined cars with three seats next to each other; in this case, the steering wheel was normally positioned on the outside, so a passenger had to clamber into the middle.
And in modern times? There are two less sporty but still popular three-seat concepts among fans: the first-generation Fiat Multipla (pictured above) and the Honda FR-V. In both cases, these were box-shaped cars designed to offer as much space as possible and for which aesthetics were not the top priority.
Since then, the three-seat front concept (at least for normal passenger cars, with the exception of commercial vehicles) has been forgotten. Wider doors due to safety requirements make the design more difficult and if only two seats are frequently used - due to the uncomfortable access to the middle seat - the compromise doesn't make much sense either due to the narrowness for the other two seats. We will probably never see a sports car with three front seats again. But never say never ...
