So I had a guy call us looking to replace the bench seat in his very special 1950 Studebaker truck. He’d been looking everywhere and after all of his research, he found nothing. Until he called me. Turns out, we don’t have a seat that is specifically designed for the Studebaker, but Greg was willing to trust me to make the right seat for him based on the dimensions he had to work with inside the cab of his truck.
Thankfully, Glide Engineering has the right frame to fit this application, but not the exact mounting hardware. Grenade Motorsports in Ohio, who is actually building the truck, will have to do a little modifying to mount the seat to his floor board, but the fabrication is minimal. For the 1950 Studebaker, we used Glide’s part # 9459 no flip. Most of the frames that come from Glide can be made with a really cool feature that allows you to flip the bottom cushion up for under seat storage or access. If you ask for the flip version of this seat, it adds a couple of inches to the width. That wasn’t going to work for this project, so we went with the standard bench seat with split backs.
Another vision Greg had for the interior of this truck was to have side bolsters built into the seats and a hump built into the center of the seat cushion. He has a history of street racing and really likes the feel of a standard racing seat and how the bolsters hug the body. We didn’t have this design or detail already built in for this seat style but I like to come at things with a positive attitude. Rather than saying “NO”, I was totally willing to work with him to make his vision come to life. It took about 5 weeks, but we build up the foam and created new patterns so Greg could have his new seat just the way he wanted it. Another personal touch Greg added was the leather. He found his own leather supplier who carried the perfect shade of distressed brown to pull off the look he was going for and had them ship the material strait to us.
Now we have an aftermarket, original style bench seat with personal and modern touches by the truck owner. We can’t wait to see the seat installed. Thanks for the opportunity Greg and Grenade Motorsports. We had fun on this one and everyone here at Cerullo is proud to have been a part of this truck’s journey.
