Seat position for long drives

[Cooper1]

Good morning,

What do you find the most comfortable seat position for long hauls? I know this may be dependant on body type, so I'm just looking for generalities. After 40 years of driving, I really hate to say that my '21 CX5 has the most uncomfortable seats I've experienced. Last summer (doing the same this summer) we took a trip to Minnesota. 18 hours behind the wheel and I was miserable. I adjusted the seat 20 times and couldn't find a sweet spot. Any thoughts?

Thanks

 

[sm1ke]

I'd highly recommend starting with Mazda's driver seat adjustment process, found here:

https://owners-manual.mazda.com/gen/en/cx-5/cx-5_8hd5ee18k/contents/03010207.html

It's a bit tedious to go through the motions, but I did this when I got my first CX-9 in 2018 and it worked wonders for me. I used to get back pain after driving for 30-40 minutes in my wife's 06 Civic, and after applying the same process with her driver's seat position, the pain went away and never came back.

 

[cz5gt]

Second the above post.
Try to adjust as much as you can.

The seats being uncomfortable (beside proper adjustment) is from the fact they are too small for some body types and have thinner harder foam on the outer layers. There are many forum threads where people complain about the CX5 gen2 seats.
Only fix if thats the case is either try some addon seat cushions (not ideal) or auto upholstery to modify the car cushion.

Usually its the bottom bucket bolsters and smaller width thats the problem. Most American cars and some European have better seats. Japanese small crossovers (with some models exceptions) tend to be smaller.

 

[Cooper1]

Thank you. I'll give it a try today.

 

[SimpleCanuck]

A few months after I bought my '22, we drove to a town that was a 10 hour drive one way. I was comfortable until about 1-2 hours remaining, when my left thigh started to cramp up. Same thing happened on the return drive. We have not been on a drive that long since then and I'm not sure when/if there would be a future one, but I have bookmarked the Mazda seat adjustment document shared here as well as the Recaro document in the other (related) thread.