Acura's Uncomfortable Seats Should Come With Free Chiropractor Vouchers

OK, listen – designing a seat that everyone finds comfortable is a near-impossible task. Adjustments help, but recently there's been a surge of complaints about Acura seats (adjustments be damned). Here's a look at the most common issues people are having with Acura seats:

1. After 30 minutes of driving some have said their legs start to fall asleep and their hips ache.
2. Longer road-trips result in neck problems from an aggressive head restraint that is pushed so far forward it’s impossible to stay comfortable.
3. Some have said their butts are numb because the seat is do damn hard and you’d be better off with a sheet of plywood.
4. An aggressive support bar drives into your lower back forcing people to sit funny.
5. People with longer legs find the thigh support is too short to ever get comfortable.

Long-time Acura owners have noticed a difference in the seats from older models.

Thought it was just me, but now after seeing other complaints I know I was not nuts. We've had many Acuras and currently own another one as well. There are no problems with [our other Acura's] seating, but the 2016 MDX is horrible to a point that I just don't want to drive it.

Is This Just a Problem Across the Board? ∞

There’s a bait-and-switch theory that can seats are designed to be comfortable for the length of a test drive, but over time tend to lack the proper support.

In his article Your Car’s Seats Are Terrible and the Industry Knows It, Aaron Robinson talks to Ray Scott who is the president of the seat division for Lear Corp:

“Car seats are designed for the first 15 minutes of ‘soak time’ in the dealership,” he told me, referring to the often much-too-brief period during which prospective buyers decide if their favored new car has comfy chairs.”

Ray Scott teamed up with a chiropractor to test traditional lumbar support and found that it did more harm than good.

Honda has a terrible reputation for comfortable car seats ∞

Honda owners have been complaining about uncomfortable seats since as early as 2004, but complaints really took off with the 2008 Accord.

How bad are these seats? Some owners have refused to take long trips because they know it would take “days to recover from the back pain.” In some extreme examples, we’ve even heard stories of people trading in their brand new cars, willing to take thousands of dollars in depreciation loss, just to avoid another commute in their Honda.

A petition for change was filed asking for Honda to do something about the problem, but the issue remains unresolved.