I've never seen anyone complain about the lack of ability the front passenger seat goes back. What's up with that?

My wife wanted to take a nap on our first long drive, and she was NOT happy that it doesn't go back very far.

It actually just doesn't make sense to me. Every car I've ever owned the front seats can lay back pretty far incase you need to take a nap or just rest on long trips.

I was really hoping she just was doing it wrong, but I tried driver seat too, and its very limited. Is there some odd reason for purposely doing this?

 

I have not tried reclining the front seats to see how far back they go, but for naps, the back seat is much better.

 

I'm totally making this up with no data to back it up: it's just my opinion based on all the other things I've seen on the Defender and what people post. It is quite evident that the JLR engineer's (or maybe it was the lawyers) went a bit overboard on the safety front. I get that they added everything to make you safe. Seeing the video of the Defender do multiple rolls down the highway at 70mph makes me grateful even! However, there are a large number of instances (can't reverse with the door open comes to mind), where safety over rode everything else. If I had to make a guess, it would be because at that angle if you had an accident, neither the seatbelt nor the airbags would matter. A passenger is going to go surfing around the cabin area (if lucky) and ejected (if not). Now I'm not being hypocritical here. I laugh all the time about when I was a kid, we would take naps in the floor boards and even on the ledge of the back window on larger cars (like a cat). So, if you want to do it - you should be able to do it - is my opinion. However, I think the JLR safety police are a bit more fascist on some of this. Ok, after rewriting that, I blame it on their lawyers because too many people sue (in the US) after an accident rather than owning what they did.

 

Well said GrouseK9

 

I'd agree with this, and only add that maybe some region or country has introduced a law and they decided cheaper to comply with it worldwide instead of making special parts. I've only reclined the seat once trying to wedge myself under the dash, it went back prety far (driver side) for my taste, so not sure what the OP is running into.