Ford Ranger

Seat Cover

As the bakkie is now ten years old, the driver's seat fabric is starting to show some wear from me sliding on the seat as I get in and out. This wear is starting to look a little unsightly, so I thought I had better do something before the fabric got worn through to the padding.

I did try putting a towel on the seat, but this moved around too much to be of any real benefit, so I decided to see what was available in the line of seat covers. Most seat covers that are available have the seat and backrest as a single unit. This was not really an option to me as the side of the backrest fabric would have to be cut away to allow for deployment of the seat airbag. In my mind this would have looked more unsightly than the worn seat.

There are companies who manufacture vehicle specific seat covers and these covers are supposed to allow for the deployment of the seat airbag. Escape Gear is a South African company which manufactures such seat covers. These are a bit pricey, and I am a bit sceptical about the efficacy of the airbag deployment mechanism in these covers.

While in a Midas store recently, I decided to look at seat covers just to see what was on offer. There are some cheap sets for all the seats (around R300), but these did not look nice at all. I found an Autogear cover for a single seat that looked as though it would fit the bakkie's front seat and it also looked quite durable. The colour scheme also appealed to me as it was not too different from the colour scheme of the upholstery in the bakkie. Unfortunately, the price was rather high. When I queried one of the staff about this, he offered me a discount that I could not refuse!

I have included the pic above as you can see it says three piece set (seat, backrest and headrest), not a single cover as mentioned in the Midas link above.

I am pleased to say that the seat cover was a very good fit, but in order to make it fit, Ford forced me to jump through a few hoops in order to accommodate the disks that holds the back of the cover.

Now, Ford had placed a piece of carpeting over the gap between the seat and the backrest at the back of the seat, which made it very difficult to get the retaining disks through. I suppose this carpet is there to protect the seat from scuffing by passengers in the rear of the vehicle.

What I was able to do was pull the carpet from the bottom corner of its retaining bracket on each side of the seat and then work my fingers into the gap between the seat and backrest. I could then pull the retaining disks through the gap and wiggle them into position. I then pushed the carpet back into its bracket.

There are two hooks on the front of the seat cover to anchor it. I hooked these into holes on the brackets holding the seat transport mechanism under the seat.

The cover fits snugly on the seat with no noticeable movement when I get in or out of the bakkie.

Unfortunately, as you can see, there is some wear on the backrest, but I can live with that for peace of mind with regard to the airbag deployment. I am very pleased with this purchase.

(updated: 26 July 2025)

Update

I am rather disappointed with this seat cover, especially considering how expensive it was before discount. After a trip to Sondela Nature Reserve I found that the cover had stretched a bit and no longer fitted as neatly as shown in the pic above.

What was more disappointing, the grey piping along the seat area had started separating from the cover.

The time scale we are looking at here is 15 days. The round trip to Sondela was 230km, with about 40km driving in the reserve and then about 50km of local driving on either side of the Sondela trip. There was no movement in and out of the bakkie on the trip to and from Sondela and probably 30 to 40 entrance and exit events on the shorter trips.

I really was hoping this cover would be more durable...

(updated: 6 August 2025)

Back to the bakkie's story.