Seats and door cards, a surprise.

I went to the Midlands today to collect a pair of red leather seats and a pair of door cards which I was planning to put in my VVC. The seller showed me the pictures of his nice 1995 car which he had put black seats into. The red seats each had a pronounced lump under the leather about three inches out from the headrest, about 2x1 1/4" and half an inch deep. It looked like it was for a folding mechanism lever but I chucked them in the car and went back home. When I took the door cards out, I looked for a date code and found a sticker with a hand written date early in September printed QP3.
That explains a lot. This car must have been one of the last of the 98 pre production quality prototypes. I wonder if there was a folding mechanism, deleted late in the day?

Sounds strange, any photos?

I will try to get a snap later today

It might not be possible to see but beneath the torn section, there is black fabric carefully formed and stitched around the bump. I am minded to strip the seat squab and see if there are any traces of a mechanism within but the way the recline mechanism works means there is unlikely to be anything there

EARLY MGF CREAM LEATHER SEATS PAIR typed into a well known auction site will find another pair like mine. Curiouser and curiouser...

Very odd, there should be no hard item under that spot. I just rebuilt a set of red leather Mk1 seats from a 1998 F and the backrest frame is just round tubing at the top with the foam backrest squab covering the frame.

Regarding the hand written numbers/letters, it should read PR3 because that was the project name for the MGF. We have one of the Fs from the first 200 batch and PR3 is written on many items, such as the backside of the door cards.

Yes, I have those. But the date is hand written in the DOM section. I think they are early production, the other side is dated August 95.

Are you sure they are originally from an MGF? and not some other car in the MG/Rover range?
I ask because I had a Chrysler Valiant Charger coupe that had a push button in a similar position, which allowed the seat back to tilt forward to allow passenger access to the rear seat, but in the sedans and station wagons which used the same seat the button was deleted as they had no need for the seat to tilt forward.
I'm wondering if MG/Rover did some thing similar and some where in the MG/Rover line up they used a variation of the same seat as the MGF in a 2 door 4 seat model.
Maybe they were short of MGF seats and shoved some from another model in to keep production running.

I don't really know as we only got a fraction of the MG/Rover range here in Oz, mainly MG Fs, TFs, ZTs and Rover 75s with a very small smattering of ZSs and ZRs.
I've never even actually seen any of the last two in the flesh, but have seem 'em advertised for sale on the net.