Recaro seats

Jeff Tan’s Excellar is the sole authorized importer and distributor of the Recaro brand in the Philippines.

If you’ve ever traveled, chances are you’ve sat in a Recaro seat. Recaro seats are the most hallowed, most popular and arguably the premier seats manufactured in the world.

Recaro not only produces OEM replacement sport and comfort seats as well as motorsports/Federation Internationale de l’Automobile-approved racing seats, but also seats for trains such as Japan’s Shinkansen (bullet train), airplane seats for Airbus, and even the tanks.

Recaro started in 1906, primarily as a coachbuilder in Germany. Coachbuilders built car bodies draped around the old-style ladder frame chassis, in the same vein as the Italian coachbuilders Zagato, Ghia, Bertone and, of course, Pininfarina for the likes of Ferrari, De Tomaso, Maserati and Alfa Romeo.

Recaro originally built bodies for the iconic Volkswagen Beetle in 1930 and for Porsche’s 356 sports car. After numerous trials, the Recaro as we know it today started in 1963. Recaro sold its coachbuilding business to Porsche and started to focus on high-end car seats.

In 1983, the Keiper Group acquired Recaro, and the company expanded rapidly in 1990, opening a branch in North America, the United Kingdom, Japan, Malaysia (for the Southeast Asian market) and France.

Today, Recaro is the most trusted and well-respected name in car seating. Their seats adorn cars ranging from Aston Martin, Audi, BMW, Porsche, Ferrari, Mitsubishi, Ford, Honda and Subaru, to name a few.

This is due to a number of reasons: All Recaro seats, when installed with the car-specific base frames and sliders, meet very stringent US Department of Transportation and German Technischer Überwachungsverein safety standards, which is not something its rivals can match. Recaro employs its own team of spine doctors to provide accurate, scientific and real-world data to develop the most comfortable, safest and  best-supportive seats in the world.

Recaro has been distributed in the Philippines officially since 2002 by Excellar Enterprises. Excellar is a family-run corporation that primarily deals with air-conditioning for home, industrial and automotive uses.

It was Jeff Tan who, after graduating from college, convinced his dad to enter the automotive segment. From there, Jeff started importing automotive parts after meeting suppliers from Europe, America and the rest of Asia.

Based in Quezon City’s Banawe Street, the heart of the car-modifying culture in the country, Excellar is the sole authorized importer and distributor of Recaro seats, seat rails, base frames and other Recaro accessories and merchandise.

For someone like me, Recaro is one of those must-have items in a properly-tuned car: stylish yet functional seats to match a mad engine, dropped suspension, flashy wheels with sticky tires, and aggressive body kit.

I spent an afternoon with Jeff  talking about cars, Recaro seats, and the future of the industry. Firstly, Jeff hates fakes—meaning fake parts, counterfeit parts, copy parts—with a passion.

According to Jeff: “ The primary reason you buy original quality parts is to improve comfort, safety, convenience and performance. If you buy a fake item, you disregard the potential safety concerns, endangering yourself, your passengers and other motorists, as well as pedestrians. If you can’t afford to buy brand-new original parts, buy surplus or second-hand. At least it’s still a safer bet than buying fake parts that have no proper design and engineering about them. There’s a sense of responsibility in tuning cars.”

Indeed, fake parts are a serious concern. Thankfully it’s quite easy to find surplus seats, thanks to a large amount of surplus parts from Japan entering our country. You can buy a pair of used but decent Recaro seats from a Lancer Evolution or Honda Civic/Integra Type-R from between P25,000 to P50,000 for a pair. Some even come with sliders and base frames, which is a bonus.

Jeff believes that the market has matured. More and more customers bring in their high-end vehicles to have the seats replaced. On Jeff’s social media pages, you’ll see pictures of Ferraris, Porsches, Land Rovers, Mercedes-Benz AMG and BMW M cars having their seats (as well as wheels, exhausts, etc.) replaced with Recaro items.

It’s not the usual Japanese rice rockets getting their seats upgraded.

Says Jeff: “The market now understands the value of a well-designed, properly engineered seat. It’s not just for fashion’s sake. People with back/spine problems buy Recaro seats. People who own high-end sports cars with Recaro seats as OEM also want the same level of support and confidence in their regular cars, hence they upgrade to Recaro seats even in their daily driven cars. And people will always want to stand out from the crowd. Recaro seats enhance your connection to your car, and improve your driving pleasure.”

The Recaro LX-F and the Sportster CS are currently the most popular seats, as the LX-F is a comfort seat that replaced the iconic N-Joy model, having been fitted to a number of luxury cars and SUVs locally. The Sportster CS is popular because it looks like a pseudo-racing bucket seat and can be found on a wide variety of cars such as Audi’s R8, RS4, RS5 and RS6 models, BMW’s M models, and Volkswagen models.

Porsches, Nissan GTRs and a few Audis benefit from having their seats upgraded to Sportster CS items. In fact, just like the OEM counterparts, the Sportster CS can be ordered with options such as side airbags, lumbar adjustment, power operation, and a wide variety of leather, fabric and suede/alcantara finishes.

The Recaro SR-7 model replaces the ubiquitous SR-3 model, perhaps the most popular aftermarket car seat in the Philippines due to a wide variety of surplus/secondhand examples in the country. It’s a traditional reclinable sport seat with micro-fine knob adjustment, and features deeply bolstered side and thigh support for lateral movement. It’s popular for track-day regulars, thanks to the slots on the headrest for a proper four-point harness.

Aside from the sport seats, Recaro also offers its one-piece shell bucket seat for the serious enthusiast and full motorsports use. I’ve owned three cars equipped with Recaro seats (surplus sets, of course), and my Audi A1 long-term test unit was fitted with a Recaro LX-F, also on loan from Jeff so I could experience the difference between OEM and modern Recaro comfort seats.

My Toyota Supra recently got a brand-new XL-size Recaro Furious bucket seat because Jeff was disposing of a last remaining old stock. Apparently Recaro bucket seats have a limit of  five years from the date of manufacture if used for serious motorsports. If the car has been in an accident, Recaro recommends replacing the seat, especially if the  accident was severe, such as a rollover or from very high speeds.

From personal experience, I can say that using even surplus Recaro seats make a huge difference. They are firmer, offer better lateral support and really help get you into the mood of driving. Admittedly the sport seats aren’t as comfortable as OEM seats, save the LX-F.

After trying a variety of Japanese, Italian, and of course, some fake seats, I have to say that the Recaro seats really help support my lower back, and I feel less tired after long drives. I have a lingering back problem (obesity sucks) so switching to Recaro seats really helped ease my back on long drives. As for the Furious XL bucket seat in my Supra, it fits my 40-inch waistline like a glove, with enough room to wiggle my thighs, and  with surprisingly great back support.

Recaro seats aren’t cheap. The cheapest model Jeff sells (old stock SR3s) retails for about P35,000, with most seats ranging into the mid 40-grand per piece. Get the Sportster CS, load it up with options and you’re easily looking at P150,000 per seat. But it’s German engineered, which is perhaps the best type of engineering in the world. It passes most traffic safety laws in the world, particularly in the United States and Germany, and as the age-old adage goes, cheap things are never good, and good things are never cheap.

Aside from Recaro, Excellar is also the sole authorized distributor of other high-end brands affiliated with motorsports.

You can be sure that Jeff and Excellar only sell high-end, original, authentic and race-proven parts.