This past week, I took a long trip in the 370Z and decided afterwards that the touring seats are fairly good, at least for my back. So the only reasons I can see for aftermarket seats are if you are seriously tracking the car.
I have an extra set of Recaro Trend seats sitting around. My wife bought a Mercedes SLK320 and it *killed* my back whenever we drove it any distance. So in 2002, I swapped out the stock seats and replaced them with the Recaros. It turned out to be fairly complex b/c Mercedes has various seat sensors (baby-smart seat, SRS deployment, occupancy by light people weight sensors) that need to be in place for their airbags to work. Getting the right Recaro rail kit was a challenge too. Overall it took over $3,000 for the parts and installation, and a lot of head-scratching to get the SRS computer to accept the substitutes.
Fortunately, the Recaros were a HUGE improvement over the stock Mercedes seats, especially for lateral support and lumbar support -- and the Trend seats are not very aggressive compared to other Recaros. But they did a much better job of connecting me to the car, and that showed up in my autocross times as well.
Now that we're selling the SLK, the stock seats are back in (with near-zero wear
), and I've briefly considered putting the Recaros into the Z. But now I'll save them for some future draft pick to be named.
This does raise the issue of installation for anyone who is considering putting aftermarket seats in the Z. It won't matter if you are doing full race prepare like DDM, but for everyone else, there are important issues to consider. I wonder, for instance, what steps one will need to take to use any of the aftermarket seats in a daily driver to retain supplemental restraint functionality. Thinking about having an accident and getting sued by a passenger, or for resale purposes, having things like functioning airbags may be an absolute requirement to limit your legal liability!