Opel has invested about 75 million euros in trying to give the Vectra the best seats in its class. Opel says this means that Vectra drivers and passengers enjoy a standard of seating formerly expected only from a large luxury sedan, and will travel in comfort even on the longest journeys.

The new Vectra’s extremely well-constructed bodyshell forms a sound basis for these high seating standards. Since the car was a totally new development, it was possible to pursue such aims as enhanced comfort, easy operation of the controls, structural strength and the highest possible level of occupant safety, yet at the same time to reduce the weight of the body. Future Opel models will also benefit from the principles used in the Vectra.

Opel’s engineers increased the height of the front seat back by 57 millimeters, thus providing more support in the shoulder area in particular. An additional 16 millimeters of longitudinal adjustment benefits occupants with long legs. The Vectra GTS, which reaches the showrooms this Autumn, has sport seats with a more contoured shape, and in all Vectra models the front seats are provided with lumbar support as standard equipment.

For the first time the lumbar support on these seats is adjusted to the desired position not by a handwheel but by a lever. Turning it through 100 degrees covers the entire range of lumbar support adjustment. Opel’s seat designers have enlarged the surface area of the plastic pressure pad by about one third, for effective spinal support from the iliac crest to the shoulder region.

Even greater scope for adjustment – electric if required – is provided on the eight-way luxury seat that is installed as standard equipment with the "Comfort" version and above. In this case not only the seat base but also the complete seat angle is variable, and can even be adjusted without needing the weight of the occupant’s body to move it. With earlier systems the seat angle had to be altered by pressing against the seats with the body after releasing the locking lever, but the new Opel Vectra seat has a convenient pump and lever system, as for the height adjustment, to perform this task.

The Vectra’s front and outer rear seats have head restraints with four-way height and angle adjustment. Thanks to a new mechanism with integral pushbutton, the head restraints can now be released very easily for individual positioning. The pivot axis for angle adjustment has been moved to the upper part of the padded area, so that the contour of the head restraint matches the back of the occupant’s head more closely.

Installed as standard equipment on the new Vectra front seats, the second-generation active head restraints make a considerable contribution toward reducing the risk of ‘whiplash’ injuries if an accident should occur. Not only the head restraint itself but also a complete, separately movable inner frame in the seat back is raised in the event of a rear-end collision. This moves the head restraint toward the seat occupant’s head, which is thrown violently backwards by the rear-end impact; at the same time his or her entire upper body is moved to a more upright position, to combat the undesirable ‘ramping’ effect, the tendency of the occupant’s body to slide up the seat back toward the roof of the car.

The pressure actuating plate for the active head restraint has been moved from the shoulder to the pelvic area, since this part of the body moves away from the regular seated position a fraction of a second earlier after a rear-end impact. Even this slight reduction in response time may be crucial for the avoidance of severe injury to the cervical vertebrae.

The new Vectra’s seats are not only notable for these high standards of comfort, convenience and safety; they also make a contribution to the ‘intelligent weight-saving’ that has been applied to the car’s design. Although the seats possess a whole series of new features, Opel’s designers have actually succeeded in reducing their basic weight by 0.4 kg compared with the previous type of seat, for example by adopting high-strength grades of steel for the seat frame.