I would like to hear the sales pitch on what will make these better than what's out there now as I am in the market for a seat.
Sure. When we decided to develop a composite seat, we noticed all the off-road racers were using seats made for street racing. For the most part, the idea is the same; to keep you held in tight. Off-road is a different kind of driving, though.
The main difference in our seat vs the others is the padding. Pretty much all the composite seats we've seen use a couple layers of cut foam for their bottom cushion. For off-road, this doesn't give you much comfort when hitting rough terrain. We developed a contoured, injection-molded foam cushion. It's much thicker, much more comfortable, and dense enough to keep you from bottoming out. The contoured shape helps to prevent your knees from knocking together as well. Similar cushions retail for over $200 and they're not even covered.
The padding all around the seat is thicker than you'll find in other seats. Makes it more comfortable all around.
Off-roading has more lateral movement than street racing so we made the lateral containment at the legs is taller.
I'm 5'11" (pretty average height) and most seats I sat in were too short. So, we made the seat back taller and we used larger harness openings at the neck to accommodate a wider range of drivers.
The headrest itself is also tilted back farther than other composite seats. Off-road racers tend to mount their seat more upright and other headrests would then push the driver's head forward and down.
On the head containment version of the Alpha, we made the containment a bit wider. Many off-road racers complain that their containment causes their head to "rattle." This, along with a padding system we're working on, will reduce or prevent that altogether.
The shell is recessed just below the harness openings to better accommodate a HANS device.
Plus, the cherry on top, is our seats are customizable at no additional charge. We suggest our new Sport Mesh or Vinyl for the best experience.
So, to recap, several features specifically built for off-road racing,a typically $200+ foam cushion, and the ability to customize, all for a similar price as the popular Sparco and Cobra models.
Hope that sales pitch answers your questions.