1:24 Recaro Speed Sport Seats

A bucket that suits almost anywhere

The Speed seat is among the most widespread sport seats of all. It came about as a compromise between a racing bucket and an ordinary seat: it has high side support for the shoulders and the thighs, yet it keeps a folding backrest and approval for road use. Thanks to that it appeared in the hot European hatchbacks of the 1980s, in the Japanese coupes of the following decade and in countless modifications, where it was the first visible change to the inside of a car.

Use on a model

Because this is not a part tied to a single type of car, the set suits most builds of this size, from a quiet road version to a sharply modified example with a roll cage. The castings carry the shape of the padding, the pressings in the backrest and the openings for the straps, that is details that usually get lost in injection-molded plastic.

Before painting it is enough to level the mating surfaces and to check that the seats do not foul the clear parts. The classic form is black fabric with side bolsters of a different material, and a combination with a colored center stripe is popular too. Masking tape cut into narrow strips will help to separate the differing shades of the cushion and the bolsters.

It pays to decide in advance whether the seats will be empty or whether a figure will be sitting in them. The position of the backrest is then chosen differently, and how much of the inside stays visible through the side windows changes as well.

Another interesting option is to set the two seats differently: move the driver's forward and fold the passenger's back. The model immediately loses its catalog stiffness and begins to look as though somebody had left it a moment ago.