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Originally Posted by mkaresh  The price is crazy high. BMW charges about $900 for a similar sport seat in its 3-Series Sport Package. Figure another $600 for the ventilation, and you're still far from $3,400. Then again, the BMW seats don't have the Recaro brand name (but the excellent seats in the Audi S4 do). |
Part of the issue, of course, is that there's orders of magnitude greater difference between the cost of a base CTS seat and the V's Recaros than there is between a BMW base seat and the BMW sport seats.
When the first-gen CTS came out, the first one I looked at was parked right next to a Saab 9-5 Aero. There was more money in one Saab seat than in the entire CTS interior.
The other part of it, too, is that Cadillac figures that people are going to want them and they're pricing them at a level that lets them make real money off of them. Judging by what Tony's had to say about the number of early orders with them leading to supply constraints it appears they're right.
I guess my view is this, based on experience with half a dozen sets of Recaro and similar OE sport seats: if you're bigger than a 34 waist, you might want to find one to try out first, and if you're a 38 you're probably going to be happier with the base seats. Otherwise, if you're skinny-to-the-narrow-side-of-average, you're going to want them for sure.
The seats in my M5 (and in my wife's 540i) were a bit snug (but still better than the base BMW seats with their too-short lower cushion) when I was a 36-plus; now that I'm a 32 waist they're loose.
Now, the aftermarket Recaro SRDs that are going in my wife's '65 Mustang convertible are pretty snug even with the reduced-fat ass.