I have a pair of seats that I recently had made for one of my project cars and I've decided to sell the car, so I am selling these seats separately. They are the Avus seat, but they are different from the standard Avus seat that is made by GTS Classics. They have different headrests and some other custom touches that I requested from Stefan. It's along story, but if you are interested in the seats, read on...
When I was looking to have a set of seats made, I flew to Texas and met Stefan. We discussed seats in general and he was kind enough to show me his seat production shop. I spent an afternoon there and sampled all of his seats that interested me. Originally I liked the ST and Rallye seats the best. I asked him to ship a couple of different seat frames with cushions to me and I test mounted them in a car and found that the best seat for my needs was the Avus, which gave effectively the same lower lateral support as the others, but were noticeably easier to get into and out of, when actually mounted in a car. The others did have a little more support in the upper sides but this didn't appear to be significant and it was a trade-off that I thought was worth it.
I planned to use these seats with a harness and the most significant change that I made was to utilize a different headrest. Most of the seats that I tried (and I tried a bunch, including Stefan's; flying to LA to try the offerings from TRE; plus l looked at a few Recaros) had headrest post spacing that conflicted with where the shoulder belts need to be run. I did some research and found that the sport seats out of a an E30 BMW M3 had posts that were 6-1/2" apart, outside to outside, which gave me perfect spacing for 2" harness belts. So, I bought a pair of the appropriate headrests and bought a pair of the seat frames, to remove the headrest tubes. I sent the headrest tubes and headrests to Stefan and he welded the tubes into his seat frames at the appropriate points. An added bonus is that the headrests are adjustable for both height and reach. I think the headrests have a period correct look, as Recaro used some of that general shape in that era. Plus, they can be removed, if desired.
I also asked for a couple other changes. The first was to located the lap belt holes as high and as rearward as he could, to give better installation angles for the lap belts. This was determined by measuring the seat frames, when installed in a car and ajdusted to the proper location for a 5-9 to 5-11 driver. I also asked for a slight change to the bottom of the frames, to reduce the amount of deflection of the support webbing on the seat bottoms. The seats were upholstered in black leather and corduroy and provisions were made in the upholstery for the installation of sub belts. They have not been mounted in a car.
There are a total of 8 possible mounting points on the bottom of the seats. See the photo of the bottom of the seat. The spacing between the front row and the rear row is approximately 270mm, or 10-5/8 inches. The spacing between the outer mounting points is approximately 381mm, or 15 inches. The spacing between the inner mounting points is approximately 335mm, or 13-5/32 inches. The spacing between one outer and one inner mounting point is approximately 358mm, or 14-3/32 inches. Mounting them in this last fashion allows you to offset them inboard about a half an inch, which allows them to line up better with the steering wheel in some cars. They weigh approximately 23-1/2 pounds each, which is quite a bit lighter than stock seats.
The price for the pair is $2,500, plus shipping from 74137. This is less than I have in them and less than they would cost to make today, given the BMW parts that are needed for the headrest conversion. Please direct any inquiries to my email account, which is jeff.roberts@cox.net
Thanks,
Jeff
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