Why romantics should buy a Chevy Impala before it’s too late

Bench seats used to be the standard of travel in American-made cars.

Those benches have been replaced by bucket seats, and Dori doesn’t know how teenage boys make their romantic first move without the slide of their date to the middle of the bench – giving them a “go sign.”

Young Dori found himself in that position, not once, but twice. As a high-schooler in Ballard he and a “good friend” drove around one fateful night that ended in a smooch.

Actually, she was a good friend he was “crazy about.” On their nighttime ride, they found themselves down by an abandon train station. They parked.

“I wasn’t the instigator,” Dori claims. He says he was just a little too shy to put the moves on a girl he’d been thinking about for some time.

She slid over to his side of his ’72 Duster all on her own.

By the time Dori met his wife, he still owned the Duster. They were sitting in it, outside of her sorority house after a dance that she had asked him to.

They had their first kiss inside that car.

He’s not the only one with such romantic memories tied to soon-to-be extinct cars. KIRO Radio News Anchor Ursula Reutin stole her first kiss in the front seat with her longtime crush.

While the bench seat is harder to find, and “kids” aren’t familiar with the romantic ways of yesteryear, they do have a chance to get a new car with a bench seat for one more year.

The bench seats will no longer be an option when the 2013 Chevrolet Impala goes out of production to make way for a completely redesigned 2014 car.

Bench seats will remain an option in most pick up trucks and “sport utilities.”