Recaro seats

Does anyone know if the mounting plates and runners on coupe Recaros can be used to fit aftermarket Recaro seats?

Sorry I don't but would like to know the answer too?

I called GSM Performance Sports Seats earlier in the week to arrange a look around their facilities in Nottinghamshire. Chap on the phone explained that Fiat Coupé specific mounting plates OMP make are interchangeable with all seats from OMP, Sparco, Corbeau and Auto Style. Apparently it's a case of drilling two holes in these base plates to allow them to fit Recaro and Cobra seats too!

The OMP plates are £85 each and the runners to go with your seats are another £45 each side but after that, you can have pretty much any seat you want.

I'm going up there on Saturday to test as many as I can

I don't know about the Recaro seats but I've used the OMP mount in mine, I ended up with the OMP Champ-R seat as I found it to be the most comfortable of the bucket seats I tried - I didn't want a reclining one though. It is quite hard to get the seat as low as a standard one with aftermarket options from what I've found, I ended up adding extra holes in the side mounts to get mine reasonably low.
Be sure to check availability and delivery dates with GSM - I've heard they are very helpful and supportive when in the showroom but not always great at delivering the promises.

I've been looking at the Corbeau RRS seat. The blurb says it's only 2.5" high from the bottom to the top of the base so they might work?



I'm not really fussed about delivery. I'll be buying in the next two months but the car will be off the road until Feb anyway. Good to know though

The Corbeau looks good! Don't know what the height of the squab is on mine, just know that when I first fitted it I felt I was sitting far too high.

Make sure you share some pictures when they are in.

I’m thinking about upgrading mine.

Looking at the Cobra Nogaro which I think looks a rather handsome seat.

Did you choose a seat Trappy?

Kind of... I've put together a short review of the seats I tried.

Here’s the breakdown of the seats I tried out in GSM’s showroom last Saturday. I suppose I should be clear on the particulars of my carcass as this is obviously a huge and personal factor. I’m 5’10” and weigh around 95kgs. I have a very broad chest and back, so a decent width seat back is a requirement for me. For reference, I physically can’t sit back in a Nissan 350Z seat – the side bolsters dig into my back leaving 4” behind me to the seat back…

OMP Style, Design 2 and whatever the other one was
A reasonably priced range of seats I’ve had on my list for years. I sat on (not in) it for all of 5 seconds. The bolsters on the base are so close my butt barely touched the seat. Awful, nasty things.

Auto Style seats
An even cheaper range of seats that come in a variety of sizes and shapes, all equally firm, uncomfortable and unsupportive. I tried about five of these and didn’t like any of them.

Recaro Sportster
I sat in this seat feeling quite sceptical. How could it be worth £1,200, almost double the price of every other recliner in there? It is worth every penny. You simply sink into it until it feels like it’s wrapped around you. It’s incredibly comfortable while holding you in all the right places but doesn’t feel restrictive in the least. Unfortunately, it was the only Recaro in there to test as I wondered would some of their cheaper offerings might be like… Over £2,500 for a pair of seats is just too much for me.

Cobra Misano
This seat looks even better in the flesh than in the photos. The best-looking seat there is to my eyes. I sat in it almost hoping I wouldn’t like in case I ended up forking out more than I had budgeted for – and I swear I heard my plums pop. The seat base bolsters are so deep and vertical, it crushes your legs together, quite aggressively. I felt like I’d been kicked in the knackers for a good ten minutes. Probably not the seat for me then…

Corbeau RRS and RXI
The RXI is essentially a revised version of the RRS. To my eye, the RRS is the marginally better-looking seat but the RXI had more support around the shoulders and, ultimately, this is more important. Both offered surprisingly little side bolster support on the base however. After noticing this, I jumped into the Golf to see how good they were in comparison to its seats as I already know they’re a very supportive and comfortable seat and found them to be about the same so it’s clearly good enough for a ‘fast road’ set-up, especially considering the extra shoulder support both offered over the Golf’s seats. They are also among the best-looking seats out there, based loosely off the Audi RS seats from a few years back I believe.

Corbeau RRB
I could easily have overlooked this seat being a recliner that doesn’t tilt for rear access, but I had a try after seeing so many glowing reviews in my research. This seat was very nearly as good as the Recaro Sportster in terms of comfort and support and better than the RRS and RXI.

The vinyl quality is so good on the Corbeaus that I had to ask which of them were leather. Turned out none of them were...

One other thing going for all of the Corbeau seats is that they come in with a base height of only 2.5”. I asked about the height of the runners – that was 1” more and then there’s the base plate. The chap in GSM looked up the part number and found a stock image that appears to be near flat. Up shot, is that these seats might even come in as lower than standard seats…
Now over a week on and having made a few phone calls and done some research while thinking over different ideas… I’m still not 100% decided. I did initially decide on the RXI with white stitching but then realised the RRB comes in Vinyl in the US with white stitching. I got a quote for these to be imported by Corbeau but that came in (at the current exchange rate) at £300 more than the cloth RRBs. They’re just not worth that much more.

Upshot is, I think I’m going to go for the Corbeau RRB in cloth. Rear access won’t be a problem as I’ve now decided to get a roll cage fitted along with harnesses.

Check the rules on this Trappy - my MOT fella was wrong - he tried to fail my track car as it had no slider for the (fixed) seat - but upon speaking to his boss he was wrong - there is no requirement to tip forward or slide forward if the rear seats are removed. So you can potentially do away with the runners, go for two cross bars then use side mounts bolted to them, keeps the height down (which is critical to the roll cage above drivers door if you wear a helmet (unless you have a bespoke cage made, not using the OMP one. I have issues with mine (5'10" and 88kg)

Thanks for the... err.. 'heads up' jonnyboy. Thing is, this will be a road car and I really don't want to make it too compromised. For me, the roll cage will primarily be installed to improve rigidity and therefore handling. I really want this little project to leave me with a car more comfortable than it was to start with. I think I'll fit the seats with runners and see how I get on first. If the OMP would be too low, then I'll look into a custom made cage - I've already been given a number by a friend who knows someone local. The recliner with runners is to keep the car comfortable.

What seat did you have height issues with incidentally?

Sparco R600 on offer at Demon Tweeks? https://www.demon-tweeks.com/uk/sparco-r600-seat-632089/