We’re already in a world where Porsche makes SUVs. So why not a world with Recaro off-road seats?

Ah, Recaro seats. With their lightweight construction and lithe, body-hugging contours designed to keep drivers “in the seat, not on the seat,” they can look almost as exotic as some of the elite sports cars they’ve graced over the decades. It’s a brand that evokes thoughts of storied European motorsports venues like LeMans or the Nürburgring. But visions of Recaro seats speckled with grains of desert sand, or slurried with mud from a four-wheeling romp through the wilderness? That’s different. But yes—get used to that vision, because Recaro off-road seats are now indeed a thing.

Recaro officially entered the rocky, muddy, and sandy terrains of the off-road motorsports market last year, debuting two Recaro off-road seats at the 2019 SEMA Show: the Recaro Cross Sportster ORV and the Pro Racer SPG XL ORV.

And just this month, a third product joined the lineup of Recaro off-road seats at King of the Hammers 2020: the Pro Racer SPG XL ORV II. Wow: a seat so great that it merited the introduction of a second generation within three months of its initial launch!

For those who are not yet familiar with King of the Hammers, it’s a southern-California desert and rock-crawling race event held every February on Means Dry Lake in Johnson Valley, San Bernardino County.

According to the seating manufacturer, their line of off-road racing seats was born of a void in the market when it comes to seating that can deal with the physical demands off-roading imposes on the human anatomy, as pointed out to Recaro by Vaughn Gittin Jr. after the Formula Drift champion ventured into Ultra4 racing.

“When I first got into racing Ultra4, I was very unimpressed with the lack of proper seating technology for this brutal sport,” Gittin said, in a statement from Recaro. “I quickly reached out the team at Recaro and they were very motivated to change the game. There is no question that Recaro’s effort and passion has saved me from serious injury on more than one occasion, both on and off-road. I am very excited for my fellow racers and enthusiasts to have access to that same technology thanks to Recaro’s constant innovation to keep us safe and comfortable—no matter our choice of fun from behind the wheel.”        

That’s a compelling origin story for Recaro’s off-road product line, and who am I to doubt its authenticity?

On the other hand, there’s always the nagging thought that another, less exciting factor could have also played an important role: the business reality that Recaro may be facing a shrinking market due to a long-term trend of declining demand for sports cars, especially in the U.S. market—the same reason, in other words, why Porsche started making SUVs.

Indeed, Recaro admits in the same announcement to a very dollars-and-cents reason why it makes sense for them to enter the off-road space, citing a finding from the Automotive News Data Center that “light-truck sales grew by 7.7 percent in 2018—a level that general car sales have never reached,” with projected growth in the off-road vehicle market of three percent per year over the next five years.

But it’s all good. I don’t hold Recaro’s entry into the off-road segment against them, any more than I hold vehicles like the Cayenne against an automaker like Porsche that built their legacy on sports cars and racing. In fact, I think it’s great that high-end automakers have pushed the envelope on what the SUV and crossover experience can be. By the same token, seeing an effort by Recaro to take seating in off-road vehicles to a new level is a good thing too.