Are Cobra Seats Good Bucket Seats?

BMW’s are known for their power, handling, and luxury interiors. Even in the cars of the late 90s and 2000s, BMW was on top of the performance world. But lets face it, the stock seats due lack some styling and function. One of our own has this awesome BMW M Coupe aka The Clown Shoe, that we are going to install some new Cobra Nogaro Racing Bucket Seats. Not only will this make his butt happier, it will be much improved over the 2000s Recaro seats that came in this JDM imported car.

 

The BMW M Coupe came out in 1998 as the Z3 on steroids’. It features a high horsepower S50 BMW E36 M3 engine with individual throttle bodies that produces around 320hp and revs out to 7000rpm. Unlike its convertible, tamed sibling, the hatch chassis is super rigid making this car handle amazing. Since this car was a Euro car that spent its life in Japan, it was imported with some cool mods already. It features upgrades such as these Brembo Brakes at all 4 wheels, Advan GT Wheels with Advan Neova tires, lowered on some random JDM coilovers, and has a DTM style catback exhaust system. But what you will notice on the interior is these old dinghy Recaro SR3 reclinable seats. These Recaro SR3 seats are very reminiscent of the early 2000’s Honda days and you better believe that mint condition ones still pull a pretty penny online. But these seats have seen better days. Not to mention they don’t particularly hold you in great for aggressive driving. But let’s be honest, they are heavy.

 

In this installment of our latest Vivid Racing Video, we are going to rip these old Recaro SR3 seats out and upgrade the cockpit with a set of these Cobra Nogaro bucket seats. The Nogaro seat is a complete fiberglass bucket shell designed to keep the driver in the best position for attacking the track or mountain roads. These particular seats are trimmed in leather and feature alcantara accents. Cobra offers them in other materials such as vinyl covers and carbon fiber backs. Every bucket seat requires proper side mounts, sliders, and seat brackets to fit in the car which we will show you what is needed.

 

To compare how these Cobra seats stack up to the big boy competition, we grabbed a set of $4000 Recaro Podium seats in carbon fiber. Recently we installed a set of these Podium seats in our own Porsche 964 and did a video on them here. Comparing the Recaro seats to the Cobra is all about price, weight, and size. So is the difference between a $1500 seat and a $4000 seat worth it? Check out the video for this info. At the end of the day, these Cobra seats for the price and quality are the best option!

 

Installing the seats requires 3 additional components to mate them to the floor of your car. First you need a seat base. The Seat base bolts to the floor to secure the seat in place. Next you need a set of sliders. Sliders allow you to slide the seat back and forth. Then you have the seat side mounts that bolt to the sliders. These then connect to the seat to make it 1 complete unit. Our go to choice for Seat Bases is from Planted Technology. Started from a small boutique racing shop in WA, Planted has become the go to source for seat bases. Their simple flat design with welded brackets are purpose built for each vehicle. In addition we chose to use the Cobra sliders and Cobra side mounts for a perfect fit.