History is full of cars that have so much going for them. These cars might look great, be reliable, or even be properly fast, but for some reason, the automaker just whiffed it when it came to the interior. What great car is let down by its interior?
The impetus for this Autopian Asks is a battle I’ve had within myself for years now. I consider myself to be a pretty big fan of the Chevrolet Corvette. To me, a Corvette is an ‘I made it’ car right alongside an early Audi R8 V10. One of my favorite Corvettes is perhaps everyone else’s least favorite, the C4.
Many years ago, when I was a kid, I found myself in a U-Haul ‘Neighborhood Dealer.’ While my parents were busy signing a rental agreement on a truck, I was drawn to the Corvette in the middle of the small building. It was a red C4 convertible with a tan top and a matching tan interior. This one was early enough to have the C4’s trick digital dash. It was love at first sight.
As an adult, my feelings have changed. I keep seeing cheap early Corvette C4s for sale, and I always end up stopping just short of pulling the trigger. As much as I dig the digital dash, the rest of the dashboard of the early C4 just turns me off. I think it’s the square-ness of it all.
Take a look:
So, my Corvette ambitions have changed since I was a kid. I know I cannot afford a C6 right now, so I’m now finding myself looking at later C4s with the refreshed dashboard, as well as C5s.
For a more modern car, my pick would be the Chevrolet HHR. I stand firm on my belief that the HHR was one of GM’s greatest, most underrated regular cars. I also think it’s better than most versions of the Chrysler PT Cruiser. I had an HHR in my fleet once, and it regularly got better than 30 mpg, and it was as trustworthy as an old family dog. Something I adored about the HHR was its flat roof. Combined with its fold-flat seats that were level with the load floor, the HHR made for a brilliant budget camper.
So, I say what I’m about to say with a bunch of love. The HHR’s interior was a huge demerit to how awesome it was. The A-pillars were large enough to obscure multiple pedestrians in them, and nearly every touchpoint was rough, pebbled plastic.
This was something that the PT Cruiser managed to do better. Its interior was also miles of plastic, but Chrysler’s plastic felt a bit more pleasing to touch and look at. Still, the HHR was a great car, and if money were no object, I’d take an HHR SS and have someone cover the plastic in vinyl or suede or something.
Now, I must choose a different brand here because I don’t mean to be picking on General Motors here. Look, I love GM enough to have bought one of its buses! The other vehicle that I keep stopping myself from buying because of its interior is the early second-generation Dodge Ram. I love the music of a Cummins 5.9, and I adore the mini big rig looks. But it all falls apart the moment I get in the cab of an early one.
I suppose there’s nothing specifically wrong with the interior; it just doesn’t make my heart flip like the exterior does. I don’t know, maybe I’m expecting such a bold truck to have a bit more spice inside. I dislike the Ram’s interior so much that, when a friend offered to sell me a rust-free Ram Cummins for $5,000, I passed. The guy who bought that truck experienced a transmission failure almost immediately after buying it, so I guess I dodged a bullet. But I wasn’t even concerned about the transmission. If someone made an old Cummins with a newer interior, I’d probably be all over it!
What about you? What really great vehicle was let down by its interior?
Early JK Wranglers (and really ANYTHING from Chrysler during this era).
Disagree with me all you want but the early JK interior is one of my absolute favorite car interiors. The steering wheel is cartoonishly large, but it has no buttons. There’s no fake leather pattern stamped into the plastic, and the material is hard-wearing and staggeringly scratch resistant. I love the simple center stack, and the straightforward gauge cluster. There’s no bullshit, but everything is a bit alternative in its design, which I love.
To make my take even more disagreeable, I despise the 2011+ interior. It’s straight out of the Caravan – too unoriginal and complicated, IMO. Why does the door card need to cover the whole door, for instance? Why do I need electronic blend door actuators, and a weird, melty-looking dash, or buttons on the front AND back of the wheel?
BMW e36. The exterior is beautiful and timeless. The interior? Not so much. And don’t get me started on the stupid-ass center vent.
The e46 interior is SO MUCH nicer, with real wood trim and much nicer materials.
The 4th gen Camaro/Firebird has one of the worst interiors of all time. Awful quality plastics, practically every interior panel will crack or break LOL
Now the dash boards are starting to warp and look melted… cheapo
Vintage!
Iconic!
Vibing!
Fiero. Swapping to a 90’s Firebird dash is a huge improvement.
Both my cars at the moment have kinda disappointing interiors.
My 2014 Ford Territory’s interior looks like it came out of a car from a decade prior. Lots of grey and silver Fisher-price looking plastics. There’s also an annoying reliance on the touchscreen and instrument cluster for feedback despite the centre console being festooned with a bunch of small, poorly-laid out buttons. None of these buttons have backlights that change colour or extra LEDs to indicate that they’re activated, forcing you to dig into the relevant touchscreen menu or just push the button and see what the monochrome screen on the instrument cluster says. So, with its ugly smattering of buttons and slow resistive touchscreen, it’s the worst of both worlds!
My 2013 Toyota Crown’s interface commits the opposite sin – relegating many oft-used functions to a small dedicated touchscreen below the main display. It’s just unnecessarily fiddly, requiring multiple touchscreen inputs to turn on the heated seats, for example, where in the previous generation it’d activated with a simple button press. At least the materials are nice, with dark finishes but no piano black in sight. The seats on my Crown are also a bit disappointing. The leather is lovely and soft but the cushioning is a bit too firm, so I get a sore lower back on trips lasting longer than 45 minutes.
If you hated the squareness of the C4 dash, let me introduce you to my car. But at least it matches the squareness of the outside too.
To answer the question, I say pretty much all Tesla models. I’ve only driven in them as rideshares but every time I’ve been wholly unimpressed.
Ahhh – which leads us to the 1983/84 Aero Thunderbird/Cougar
Because Ford reused that same old boxy dashboard on their top-of-the-line coupes.
The LTD dash actually came from the ’80-’82 Tbird. The ’83-’84 dash is very similar but not quite the same. I attempted to put an ’83-’84 Tbird top dash pad on an LTD dash and it didn’t quite like up, however some people have made a Tbird cluster work in an LTD dash.
Oh you’re right – because the ’80-82 TBird/Cougar dash had that row of warning lights on a cliff-face strip on top of the dash which the 83-84 eliminated..
The Turbo Tbird dash installs in the aero body cars, including seats.
I was shocked when I saw one of the square dashes.
Well, considering Ford did just that in ’85…
Mercedes, my son just bought a 2005 C6 for a very reasonable price. It’s got GM plastics and wear and has 132,000 miles. For a 20 year old car, the dual zone climate, heated seats and heads up display are sufficient and the head unit was replaced so it pairs with a phone. Who cares anyway when the cammed LS2 fires up.
As far as interiors in nice cars go, I would say nope all day to the MK8 GTI with it’s silly capacitive sliders and “buttons”. Utter garbage, wrapped in finger smeared piano black plastic.
C5 and C6 Corvettes. C7 improved interior substantially.
The Delorean! That nursing home grey interior is just horrible! I’d much rather have a Fiero GT
AND the Citroën 2CV: Stiff black plastic, strange handles snd levers and mystrious voids, all scattered here and there allover the place! I’ll take a Land Rover series car anytime over that.
In defense of the Citroen 2CV interior, it is entirely in keeping with the car’s mission statement. It’s supposed to be as cheap and easy to manufacture and fix as possible, just like the rest of the car, what did you expect? If you care how the interior looks, you’re not the car’s target demographic of people who need basic transportation dirt cheap and dead simple. It is what it is and it ain’t trying to be anything else, and I respect that.
I mentioned it because it’s a great car! Owned 3. It’s just the most horrible interior. Not that you have time to notice that really, with all the fun you’re having 🙂
The 2CV isn’t let down by its interior–the entire car is like that, top to bottom, inside and out. It’s not for everybody, but the interior isn’t any worse than the rest of the car.
According to every European car magazine i ever read as a teenager, the answer would be every single American car ever produced.
Stop reading the Euro rags. The only time Europeans journalists stop fellating German car company executives is when they are told to bad mouth the Americans.
Up to a point, I’d argue that they were right. American cars of the 90s and 2000s had some downright awful, cheap feeling interiors. A great example of this is the last gen Fusion that we got in the US. My fiancee used to have an 09 Fusion, the first gen, and it was cheap plastics and rubber galore. My dad got a 2013 as a company car and it felt like a European car on the inside, because it was (Mondeo). I was genuinely impressed. It was around that time I feel like American automakers really stepped up their interior game.
One Ford.
Until the decided it was easier to fleece people on the margins they can make on trucks.
As a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed young Ford engineer i totally bought into the One Ford thing.
My girlfriend has a 2008 Fusion that (for some reason) she adores.
Sometimes I drive it. The steering wheel and shift lever feel like they belong in a U-Haul.
Good News!! Ford also makes Uhauls!
How about the early 6th gen Dodge Chargers from the 2000s? Such a cool rebirth of an icon (carping about the door count aside) after so many years in the wilderness, but with such a meh parts bin interior you’d see on much less Dodges? It always made me a little sad.
I had a Dodge Magnum as a company car in 2006-2007. It looked so cool but that dash and interior were awful. Seats were pretty comfy at least.
My SN95 Mustang interior is kind of awful? I guess a lot of 90s cars had awful interiors but the Mustang built quality is also questionable. Looks decent on the outside, you can have it with a V8 but the interior? no thanks
The 90s had a combination of:
1) cool digital functions = ooooo buttons
2) we can use CAD inside to make things rounder like we did outside! round all the things
3) more buttons
4) people like color inside the car, lets make more cars burgundy
5) higher trim = more cool features = even more buttons
It’s the monochromatisity of it all I think. In the 80s, cool and futuristic – in the 90s, so dull.
And yeah, mine has huge panel gaps, which I now kinda enjoy as unintentional retro, but still, it’s objectively silly.
While perusing the Facebook Marketplace a few months ago I came across a Dodge Magnum SRT. A decent looking wagon with a big V8. Then I got to the interior pics. Woof…. It wasn’t in bad shape, it just never looked good.
Yep – came here to post this. I think if they hadnt made it the worst interior of all the LX platform, it would have sold a lot better. A stick shift 300 SRT Wagon – GIMME!
I feel like those types of cars were made for the Pimp My Ride era. That is the kind of car worth spending money on for a customized interior where almost anything is an improvement over the stock materials and styling.
We had a 2006 VW Passat 3.6, bought in 2011 with about 50,000 miles on it. That was a great budget luxury car, powerful and pleasant to drive, fantastic seats with the Sport package, but everything you touched in that interior was already falling apart. Buttons chipping, the “chrome” on the shift lever flaking in occasionally painful ways, the soft touch paint peeling off the door pulls.
The design itself was all fine, and the materials would have felt good and appropriate to the car’s price (about $38K, a lot for a non-premium brand midsizer at the time) on the showroom floor brand new, but there was absolutely zero longevity to any of it.
Those interiors are so, so suceptible to that, it’s ridiculous, and I’ll be the first to admit it. But a lot of it is down to how the previous owner treated the car. I’ve had several VWs and have never had issues like that, but have detailed others in the same age range that were absolutely disintegrating.
When I was growing up my mom had a 2001 V70. After ten years, the interior still looked pretty good, with no wear on the soft touch surfaces. A friend’s mom had an 04 V70 and it was absolutely trashed. Soft touch peeling everywhere, trim broken and falling off. They were always a lot harder on their cars than we were, and it showed.
It shouldn’t be that bad at 50k miles though should it? My MK4 Jetta was still pretty great by 180k. My wagon is a different story at 160k miles (I’m actually pulling the seat covers and replacing them with new ones I got from ebay this weekend), but the interior quality was still really good in the MK5s. 50k seems early for that.
Yeah 50k is awfully low for the kind of damage, but I detailed cars for over 15 years and some people manage to do a lot of damage to their cars so I’m not surprised. I’d argue that VWs (and many European cars to be fair) might have been more prone to it, with all those soft touch surfaces. I also wonder if certain options/hand creams caused damage to soft touch surfaces.
My ex had an 05 Passat for years and the interior still looked nice at 150k when we split. My wagon looks nearly mint at 70k, but I’m pretty kind to it. I think I’ve only had a rear seat passenger four or five times in five years of ownership. I’m just careful about the way I haul large/dirty things and have so far avoided damage.
I think all of my interior issues are Texas heat related. I’ve replaced the black soft touch around the shifter, because it was getting pretty melty where my knee rubs it, and I’m getting ready to replace the seat “leather” because it’s cracked, and all the “leather” on the door panels is falling right now. Not really sure how to replace that last one quite yet
Pontiac fun cars like Trans Am and Fiero, with the plastic fantastic?
To take the question another way, and to avoid piling on GM as so many already have, I nominate 00s Audis.
The premium material selections and pleasing design of the interior implied a level of quality to the overall vehicles that were not backed up by their powertrains. Surely many were fooled into buying them after a test sit/drive, only to discover the bad news soon enough.
So even if the vehicles themselves weren’t let down, the customers were.
This category is absolutely dominated by literally every good to drive GM product from 1980-2015. Honorable mention to the Ariel Atom for it’s lack of the concept of an interior
I would argue the atom would be let down by a beautifully crafted, comfortable, quiet interior.
The madness of it all is kind of the point.
You ask about great cars let down by bad interiors, then ask us not to pick on GM? The extreme majority of GM cars have bad interiors, and a substantial amount of GM cars are otherwise great. GM is the answer here.
On a different note, the current Mustang GT500 is a great performing car but awful interior. I would normally forgive the interior of Ford’s sports car, but when that GT500 can easily MSRP for over $100K then nah, its cheap, bad interior is NOT ok.
I have grown up with American cars, but I have tried my best to branch out. Its a shame how much better interiors are from other cheap cars. the Gen 2 Eclipse/Talon had a very comfortable interior, my 95 jetta was nice, etc. These are simple cars but just nicer than nearly any american interior of the time. Ford and GM have finally gotten up to par in most places. FINALLY.
I came here to say exactly that about GM.
My 2005 (997) Porsche 911 Carrera. The radio buttons were sticky (this could be remedied with an alcohol swab, but still), the paint wore off of the climate control buttons, and it probably didn’t help that the interior was gray. I know you don’t buy these things for the interior, but you want it to be a nice place to spend time regardless.
Full leather and the PCCM+ upgrade Porsche will sell you really transforms that interior. I think the 997.1 interior is wonderful. Clean, classy, solid, and good materials.
Trying to think of answers that aren’t just “American and Japanese cars from the 80s-00s”
I think you’ve got it thoroughly covered with this statement.
To me, the absolute embarrassment was the basic Mk5 Golf punching so far above it’s pricetag that it was too hard to ignore.
Dodge Neon SRT-4. You have no idea how many times I’ve researched them in hopes to buy one, only to keep running into having to address the interior as the place I’d be spending my time behind the wheel… and subsequently closing all my browser tabs.
Older WRXes.
The NVH makes it feel so much cheaper than it should be.
I had a 2003 WRX as a daily for about 15 years, and while the interior was nothing special, it held up nicely and I never had any complaints. The NVH was noticable but…as a performance car, I got used to it.
I now have a 2017 GTI, which has a MUCH nicer interior…as far as style goes, anyway. I do note that the GTI has already developed a tear in the seat fabric, while the WRX’s seats looked almost new the day I sold it in 2020.
Pretty much any recession era Daimler Chrysler product.
Those interiors sucked but so did the rest of the car in most cases.
You could just put “90s-10s GM” in this and it fits. The first CTS-V, 04-06 GTO, Solstice/Sky twins immediately spring to mind but GM has really come a long way in interiors.
I’d widen the starting point to about 1970. “Oh no!, the government is forcing us to make interiors that maim you a bit less, therefore everything must be made out of the cheapest plastics we can find! Even on our finest luxury cars”
The 5th gen Camaro. I’m no interior snob, but those were AWFUL!
Not a great vehicle but international trucks (current LT, RH or HX models) with their premium “diamond” package the seats are uncomfortable to hell and I think the lower end seats are more comfortable (which are also back and butt killers hah)