I've seen the back seat described here as a leather shelf. And that's pretty much how I see it.

I recently took out the back seat to check the rear speakers. When I had it out, I thought it would be pretty simple to make a deck surface to replace the back seat bottom. Then I could use this space for cargo without worrying about hurting the seat leather.

I'm thinking I would make the deck out of wood. I could make the decking a good match for the interior wood trim (the beauty option), but I may just put down some black rubber or carpeting to better take the effects of grocery bags and luggage (the utilitarian option). In either case, I'd put some sheet foam inside the frame and under the decking to make sure road noise gets effectively absorbed.

I thought about removing the seat back, too; however, it matches up with the "headrests" that conceal the roll bars. I'm still thinking how I might make this work.

All of this work could be easily reversible.

I did a search and was not able to come up with any threads that got into this subject. Has anyone else done this? If so, what design was used? Beautiful or utilitarian or a compromise?

 

I am currently working on, something like that, but instead of a shelf, it will be a custom enclosure holding 2 12's and a big mono AMP in the middle, again just replacing the bottom part of the seat.