Car seat design and aircraft seat design tend to stay in their own lanes. Plane seats are usually built to be as lightweight as possible without compromising air safety, while your car seat tends to be a bit more comfortable and engineered to withstand car crashes. But what if a car design studio designed a plane seat? This is the Stellantis Design Studio and Geven eForma Business Class Recliner seat. It’s a seat that’s designed like a car, and one of its highlights is smaller panel gaps.
I recently got to enjoy a free upgrade to first class on a United Airlines flight. It was my first time ever flying first class on a domestic flight and my second time flying first class, period. Honestly, it was awesome. It blew my mind to get an actual hot meal, a hot towel, and bottomless alcohol on a flight that never left America. The seat was great, too. I felt like I was sitting in a recliner, and I had ample space in all directions. If it weren’t for the cost of plane tickets, I’d never fly economy again.
For how great the whole experience was, it was fascinating to observe how even first-class airline seats can have design gaps, literally. In both of my first-class experiences thus far, I noticed that it’s technically possible to lose my phone in weird gaps and spaces, and some edges were a bit rough when I looked closely enough. But it was fine. The comfy seat, the food, the booze, and the space alone are totally worth it. I suppose I’ve never had this question before, but what would happen if car designers made a plane seat? The Stellantis Design Studio has collaborated with airplane seat maker Geven, and now we have the answer.
Car Designers Penning Other Things
Back in 2021, Stellantis launched the Stellantis Design Studio. According to Car Design News, the studio was born out of the Peugeot Design Lab and is intended to carry out design work and projects across the Stellantis car portfolio, but also outside of Stellantis. The studio isn’t one place, but has branches in Paris, Turin, Shanghai, São Paulo, Casablanca, and Detroit. The head of the Stellantis studio is Klaus Busse, who also oversaw design for Alfa Romeo, Jeep, and Maserati in Europe.
The Peugeot Design Lab was a bit of a skunkworks. It worked on cars, yes, but it also had design collaborations with Airbus Helicopter, Alstom, Bénéteau Groupe, Bombardier, the F.I.A., Gillardeau Oysters, Haier Group, Pleyel, Whirlpool, and Zodiac. The Stellantis Design Studio continues that tradition, and it has resulted in some weird and fun designs. Do you really like Batman? Well, the Stellantis Design Studio and Formitalia designed a furniture set that’s supposed to make you feel like you’re in one of those dark and gritty Batman movies.
The Stellantis Design Studio has also made its mark on the Maserati MSG Racing Formula E team, Peugeot’s new logo and brand identity, Citroën’s new brand identity, a Pecqueur watch, the Strasbourg Tram for Alstom, the Tofinou 9.7 sailboat, a Peugeot bicycle, and more.
The studio has been quite obsessed with aviation, penning the designs of the Airbus Helicopter H160 and the concept of the Auro Aero.
Most recently, the Stellantis Design Studio has gotten into designing aircraft interiors. The studio first teased its concept for a sort of first-class or business-class cabin (below). This one is sort of weird because it envisions an airplane cabin as a social space.
Each seat would have a privacy panel that comes down so you can converse with the passengers around you.
Car-Inspired Plane Interiors
What’s more interesting, I think, are the two interiors that Stellantis designed with actual aircraft interior equipment companies. Both were announced on the same day, and both are on display at the Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg, Germany.
The first collaboration was with Italy’s Geven, a qualified seat supplier for Airbus, ATR, and Boeing commercial aircraft, plus a seat provider for Leonardo defense.
Unlike the above concept cabin, the Stellantis Design Studio and Geven collaboration is an upgrade for an existing product, Geven’s Forma seats. Introduced in 2022, the Forma seats (below) are fairly standard business class seats. Apparently, they’re also used for premium economy class on widebody jets. The seats have a fixed shell and recline inside that shell. It looks nice, like many other modern business class seats.
You’ll find Geven seats in the planes of 25 airlines, including Frontier Airlines first class, Lufthansa Group airlines, Wizz Air, Turkish Airlines, Icelandair, and others.
Stellantis Design Studio says that this new generation of Forma seat is now electrified and features touches carried over from car design. Apparently, the studio’s designers, which include car designers, worked to reduce the seat’s panel gaps, among other things.
Actually, I’m just going to directly quote the press release, because it reads like a marketing copy for a car, and that makes me smile:
Drawing on Stellantis Design Studio’s automotive heritage, the new eForma prioritizes precision and durability through carefully controlled details.
Each enhancement is thoughtfully designed around the user experience while preserving visual purity, ensuring the seat remains both highly functional and elegantly understated. Hidden or minimized shutlines create a cleaner, more refined interaction between body panels and adjacent surfaces, while fewer visual breaks and consistently tight gaps enhance perceived quality throughout.
Also, like a proper car press release, there are a lot of flashy words. Check it out:
Stellantis Design Studio strengthens the design language of Geven’s new eForma, bringing greater clarity and consistency to its overall identity. Unified surfaces, volumes, and interfaces reflect Geven’s Italian elegance, creating a calm, balanced presence and a more coherent silhouette from every angle. The result is improved visual continuity across all components, with design choices deliberately focused on long‑term value rather than unnecessary complexity.
You know what? I like it. Obviously, I haven’t seen it in person, but it looks like something that can be bolted into a plane tomorrow. If the real product is anything like the pictures, the seats could have that little extra attention to detail that I thought the seats in the planes I’ve been in didn’t have.
How much do people care about that? I have no idea. But I admit that I spend quite a lot of time staring at different surfaces inside planes. I also know that I am weird.
Still, I can’t stop giggling at the idea of car designers reducing panel gaps in airplane seats. I hope they had some great fun penning this work. Hey, Stellantis, when are we getting Hellcat plane seats?
One More Stellantis Plane Interior
On the same day that Stellantis announced the new Geven seats, it also announced a new concept aircraft cabin interior with Sogeclair. This latter company is not specifically focused on aircraft interiors, but on industrial engineering. Sogeclair makes a little bit of everything, from driving simulator rigs and train driver simulators to aerospace systems and naval architecture.
This concept interior, called Vista, doesn’t have any car inspiration. Instead, it’s supposed to be a bit of a pod suite with its own private door, walls, and a living room inside. The pod has a full-height wardrobe, a built-in minibar, and lots of nooks and crannies so your carry-on luggage can be tucked away.
Stellantis says that this interior would utilize natural wood finishes and leather, among other surfaces that would be pleasing to the touch. The tech was also minimized where possible for more of a living room touch.
This interior is far more of a futuristic designer dream than the eForma seats above. However, Stellantis and Sogeclair contracted TailWind Airline Consulting to ensure the design would meet certification standards in case an airline wanted to implement this interior. Apparently, this interior was designed to work with existing layouts, and it’s feasible to produce it. But, since it’s a concept, who knows?
Either way, it’s just pretty awesome that a bunch of designers at Stellantis seem to be having fun designing things that aren’t cars. I must admit, I did not have “Stellantis airplane seats” on my Bingo sheet. But I love it. There’s a chance I’ll never fly on a plane with one of these seats, but it’s still neat that at least some of what these folks are designing will exist.
So, the next time you’re flying international, or heck, if you’re one of our lovely readers in Europe, take a gander at your airplane seat. Maybe, one day, you’ll see a Stellantis logo somewhere on it.
Top graphic images: Stellantis; Pentel
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