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A bucket seat is a car seat contoured to hold one person, distinct from a flat bench seat designed to fit multiple people. In its simplest form, it contours somewhat to the human body, but may have a deep seat and exaggerated sides that partially enclose and support the body in high-performance automobiles.
Before World War II, the term Kübelsitzwagen (meaning bucket-seat car) became popular in Germany, for light open-topped, cross-country and military vehicles without doors, because these were typically equipped with bucket seats, to help keep occupants on board, in an era before the adoption of . This body style had first been developed by in 1923. They are typically standard in front of fast cars to keep drivers and other passengers in place when turning at speed. Rear "bucket seats" are typically hybrids of bench and true bucket seats, being contoured like the latter but fixed in place, even when divided by a center console, and thus lacking a free-standing bucket seat's front-rear and often backrest angle adjustability.
The popularity of front bucket seats began with sporty compact cars, pioneered by General Motors in 1960, with production of the Chevrolet Corvair 900 series Monza Club Coupe with standard front bucket seats. By 1962, more than one million U.S. built cars were factory equipped with bucket seats; often, these were fitted with a center console containing a Gear stick and other features such as , a cigarette lighter, storage compartments, and power window controls between the seats. Large luxurious front bucket seats (and contoured "bucket-style" rears) made their debut in American personal luxury cars with the debut of the 1963 Buick Riviera in late 1962 as a 1963 model. In 1964, Ford introduced the Mustang "pony car", following the success of the sporty Corvair Monza further popularized the idea of standard front bucket seats – although a front bench seat was an available option. With the introduction of subcompact automobiles in the U.S. in the early 1970s, such as the Chevrolet Vega and Ford Pinto, bucket seats were used for the same reasons they had originally appeared: lack of seating room and floor-mounted levers for the gear shifter and parking brake.
While bucket seats continued to gain popularity among compact and sporty cars, the bench seat remained the preferred front seating arrangement in larger cars and trucks until the late 1990s. Increasingly, mid- and full-size domestic cars, as well as trucks, offered front bucket seating options for customers who wanted a sporty image or more personalized car. In the following decades this trend spread, with the last sedan to come with a standard front bench seat being the 2011 Lincoln Town Car, and the last to offer it as an option the 2013 Chevrolet Impala. SUVs spread widely during this time, universally with bucket seats in front. As of 2015, only some and SUVs retained the front bench seat.
The Chrysler Pacifica was a luxury crossover SUV where all three rows were bucket seats.
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