In 1959, Chrysler introduced a clever feature on all five of its passenger-car brands: swing-out front seats to make entry and exit more graceful.

In the late ’50s, the Chrysler Corporation made a special effort to create unique features that were designed to set the automaker apart from the rest of the Detroit herd. They included Virgil Exner’s far-out Forward Look styling, a push-button automatic transmission, an in-car record player, and electroluminescent lighting, to name a few. Here’s another neat gimmick on Chrysler products of the era that’s worthy of a closer look: swivel front seats.

Introduced for the 1959 model year, the setup was called “Sport Swivel Seats”  at DeSoto, where it was standard on the Adventurer, optional on some Firedomes and Firesweeps. At the Dodge division the term was “Swing-Out Seats,” while at Plymouth, Chrysler, and Imperial the feature was usually descibed simply as “Swivel Seats.” In all cases they worked essentially the same: the front seats pivoted outward exactly 40 degrees to allow the driver and passenger to enter and exit the vehicle more easily. It was a thoughtful idea, given Exner’s preference for fashionably low rooflines.

While we might imagine that the mounting arrangement was something like a modern office chair, the actual mechanism was rather different. Instead, a set of spherical nylon rollers ran in a large circular steel channel on the underside of the seat base to give the assembly greater stability (above). Both seats, in turn, were mounted to a frame that spannned across the transmission tunnel.

A chrome lever on the outboard side of each seat cushion released a latch so the tension of a helper spring could swing the seat on its track. When driving, the seats were intended to remain locked in the forward position. On ’60 and ’61 swivel seats the operation was automatic in both directions, managed by a hidden cable apparatus that coupled the opening and closing motion of the door to the seat.

The feature was heavily advertised by all five Chrysler divisions in 1959, but considerably less so in 1960. And while they seem to have been relatively popular, the swivel seats were discontinued after 1961, for reasons never announced. More than a decade later in 1973-77, General Motors offered 90-degree swivel bucket seats on its intermediate-sized coupes, but when the platform was revised for ’78, GM then dropped them as well. Given current safety and packaging considerations, it seems unlikely that we will ever see them on passenger cars again.