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?
The 2002-2005 Ford Thunderbird. It’s no sports car, but as arguably the last American “personal luxury” car, I think it’s neat. Except for that interior. Instead of the chill retro vibes the exterior styling has, the interior screams “last car on the Enterprise lot after getting off a CRJ100 at BFE Regional Airport on a cold winter’s night at 11:30 PM after your connection was delayed, and you still have to scrape the ice off the windows”. You can tell me it’s actually a Lincoln interior, but I don’t care. It looks like the typical lousy early 2000s Ford interior, but at least a Ranger doesn’t think it’s a personal luxury car. I absolutely HATE that sea of black plastic in the Thunderbird.
When I saw the Dodge ram in the header pic, I thought you ment something else by not aging well. That gen of dodge ram is notorious for dashboards cracking. My coworker has one and it’s less cracked and more… gone
Same here. I don’t mind the design, it’s a basic truck, and the layout reflects that. Simple, easy to use, basic, inoffensive. The cracking is a bigger problem.
There are aftermarket replacements now.
My 4wd Dodge has the full Deadend Drive In dash though.
Maybe what great site I’d let down by its crap members? I’m out
And Tombstone’s Curly Bill comes to mind: Well, bye.
Porsche 996. I always think, hmmm, maybe….then I see that 90s Hyundai dashboard.
I did a lot of stuff to try and spruce up my 996.2 when I owned it to make it nicer to the touch/feel, but all of the 996.1s I’ve driven were so much worse in material quality than the already marginal 996.2 that it feels like they assembled a New Beetle and turned the seats around.
2004 Cadillac CTS-V. The boombox looking center stack on the dash is actually a deal breaker. Hideous.
Yeah I’ve heavily considered one multiple times and decided against it every time when I actually test drove it for that reason.
Pontiac G8 GT. So much cheap plastic that rattled and came loose. The Chev y SS was such an upgrade.
Chrysler 300
The early ones were so awful. Really anything Chrysler of that era were just bad.
Forgot the gm pickups with the stereo apparently controlled by passenger knees. Dont know why gm hated it customers in the 80s where a bench seat at least let it work but MY 04 when I last looked it was made of horrible.
-E36 Bimmers… not ugly, just not made to last
-Ferraris with sticky buttons
-pretty much anything with “extended leather”, unless you like the way that stuff turns to chicharrones after a decade
-pretty much any Dodge product but especially Vipers
-late-‘80s Toyotas. I love Mr. T’s stuff lots, but the interior on a friend’s third-gen Tercel was flimsy and gross even before it started quickly biodegrading.
-pretty much any Corvette. Every new generation, people say “The interior’s not cheesy anymore!” but what they really mean is that it’s just not as cheesy as the previous gen.
-996 Porsches. I was all-in on that blobby ‘90s biomorphic styling when it was new but now it only fuels shame. It looked bad, and I feel bad.
-early-aughts Astons. See blobby design regrets above. Every time I see some V12-powered, 6-speed-shifted DB7 for about $25k on Craigslist my good bad idea receptors light up until I see the shiny splats of burlwood stuck randomly around the cabin and think maybe a TVR would be a more tasteful choice.
Jeep XJ all day long. The body, transmission and engine will outlive everyone reading this but the little things inside like window switches, door wiring and headliner will crack break and fall apart. Increasingly harder to get the headliner panel, etc.
Basically every car that has an integral center console.
Even if for some reason legally I cannot have a 3rd seat between the front seats, put a little seat there for doggos, or at least leave enough room for me to place a cushion there for a doggo.
I think that Ram has a perfectly reasonable interior. I got in a Chevy HHR one time and my mood took a hit immediately. Every molding seemed so shallow and gray.
EVERY AFFORDABLE CLASSIC CAR PROJECT. Seriously. The vast majority of them had gorgeous interiors when new, any car from the beginning of automotive history through at least the 1960s probably had a fantastic interior design with lovely materials and styling, as well as decent comfort. Classic cars had amazing interiors when new…
BUT, they sure as heck don’t now! Decades of wear and tear + exposure to the elements have left the gorgeous interiors of most classic cars crumbling into dust if not completely shredded to the point of being disgusting, and if you want a classic car with a nice interior that’s either unusually well-preserved or lovingly restored, you’re gonna pay for it.
And yet… There is still something so tempting about the prospect of a sub-$10,000 opportunity to own a running and driving (or even just salvageable) example of a car you’ve always dreamed of, even if the interior looks like it may have once been, or still is, the home of several generations of mice and raccoons and meth addicts and exotic mold varieties unknown to science, all engaged in a bloody civil war for car interior dominance. Because surely, if you have the stomach for it, the driving experience just might be worth it…
Also every Chrysler product of the Daimler era and beyond. Seriously. The PT Cruiser, Dodge Caliber, Chrysler Crossfire, and Dodge Nitro would all be cult classics by now if the interiors were decent. Nowadays even if people start to give those cars credit for having fun styling and worthwhile performance/driving experiences, they’ll quickly bemoan the awful interiors and declare the whole car to be hot garbage as a result. If the interior was good, people would treat Chrysler as being no worse than VW or BMW.
Also, bonus obscure answer: The final generation Reliant Scimitar. They were fast. They were decently reliable. The chassis was specially designed and tuned by Lotus, and it handled like a dream. The styling was Giovanni Michelotti’s last design. And the interior was… bad. So bad. The whole car is unfortunately a Parts Bin Special, which is already painfully obvious from the outside where parts-binning butchered the beauty of the designer’s intent, but the interior is where it shows the most. It was slapped together on a shoestring budget from ill-fitting parts and is just sad to look at. It could have been one of the best sports cars of its day, but it ultimately became an underdog at best simply because of its appearance and build quality.
My 72 Super Beetle’s interior was like that when I got it. New seat covers and a very thorough cleaning of everything, plus polishing all exposed metal, really made a big difference. Yeah the headliner is ripped in many places and the carpet behind the rear seats is deteriorating. But people always tell me how nice it looks, and it’s fun to drive all the same. A mid century car has a much more…complex interior than my Beetle, but I’ve seen several cars like that for sale where you could make a lot of it presentable, if imperfect. I’ve also seen some where every piece of the interior should be burned for fear of spreading a new and as yet unknown disease. So I definitely see where you’re coming from.
The wrecker at a particularly shady tow place had so. many needles lying around in it, the next driver refused to ever use it.
They had to buy a new truck.
How obnoxious is the owner?
Place has been firebombed at least twice.
Last time was especially enthusiastic and made the news.
Guy or gal had used a vehicle near the building as accelerant.
“Decades of wear and tear + exposure to the elements have left the gorgeous interiors of most classic cars crumbling into dust if not completely shredded to the point of being disgusting”
I can 100% assure you the interior of my ’64 Buick is stunning.
I don’t doubt it. That’s why I specified “most.” There are some beautiful survivors out there for sure. I’m lucky enough to have a ’66 Thunderbird with its original interior in decent shape. It’s got a couple rips in the seats, a tear and cigarette burns in the headliner, a cracked vinyl dashboard, and other little imperfections, but it’s far from gross and looks nice enough to be presentable and an enjoyable place to spend time. It’s one of my favorite parts of the car, a beautiful example of space-age design.
But of course… that car would’ve been a lot cheaper if the interior wasn’t as nice. A good original interior is one of the most desirable traits in a classic car project IMO, you can find a lot more cars with 0 rust and straight body panels than cars with good original interiors, but a surviving original interior is the ultimate time capsule.
I’ve seen some amazing crack dashboard restoration videos using this putty stuff. Mix to match the paint. Using a scrap piece to match the texture. It’s amazing what can be done for literally just a few bucks.
Most older cars are primarily metal. interiors.
Some I’ve had were like new inside.
The Crossfire is particularly fun in that regard because it’s a cost cut version of an outgoing Mercedes interior that was already pretty bad.
I think you covered the big ones. I love the gen 2 rams interior especially the 98 and foward but they don’t age well. Basically any American car of that era is the same boat. The Fords right after that seem to age fine I’m not sure GM ever got it right theit plastics just doesn’t have what it takes and design is not great. The German interiors of the 00s especially vag stuff doesnt hold up great either but at least look pleasant enough when they are in ok condition.
Cool to read others’ experiences and answers here, because, as someone who mostly grew up in Fords, the opposite was almost always true.
Not an entire interior, but the seats in my 08 Sequoia. They are hard and uncomfortable. During the early covid shutdown I drove to get my son from college and it was 415 miles each way, which we did in one day. By the end, my back and butt were hurting so bad that I was not able to drive for the next few days.
I’ve heard many longtime Toyota owners say the new gens of the late ’00s were a big step down from earlier models as far as interior design and quality.
I’d say any Chrysler interior from the DB “merger” to the end of the Cerberus debacle. They were like tupperware. I used to wonder how interior designers at Chrysler lived with themselves.
I once heard the MB-Chrysler merger referred to as when Germany and Poland merged in 1939.
Take that back! Tupperware is a quality product!
It’s funny, every time I try to compare that era of Chrysler interior to some sort of brand defined by it’s plastic, I end up deciding that the plastic Chrysler used was somehow worse.
Tupperware? Nicer to touch than Chrysler plastic.
Fisher Price? I’ve been in a Cozy Coupe… and yeah still nicer than Chrysler plastic. Seriously, the finish on Fisher Price plastic is typically nicer than the weird sort of mat finish these Chrysler products had, that if you touched the dash with dry hands it was akin to touching a fine grit sandpaper.
As for the interior designers, I figured they threw them into a dungeon of sorts and had an accountant specify materials from that point forward.
Any 996 Porsche but particularly the Turbo since it’s such a desirable car otherwise.
Current Mercedes-Benz interiors for all but the E Class – unless that E Class is equipped with a MegaScreen.
Literally nobody asked for a MegaScreen. And nobody should get Piano Black (or it’s derivatives – Carbon Fiber, Piano Grey with stars, etc – even on some when the dash has wood) on any console of any Mercedes-Benz.
Every Cadillac sport sedan since the 1st gen CTS-V..
I’m saying DB9. For as absolutely gorgeous as that car looked, and still does frankly, the interior was just aways meh to me. Like the outside just set a tone that the interior could not match.
I wouldn’t say it’s a great car, but I was in the back of a Tesla Y the other day and all I could think was “people accept this? Really?”
The interior is just a big screen surrounded by plastic and the fakest, saddest piece of wood trim known to mankind. I’m fine with minimalism as a concept, but it felt ridiculously cheap and poorly resolved. Even if Elon wasn’t an issue, I would pass on buying a Tesla just because of the interior.
True for all Teslas. Those interiors look like the basement apartment of a single guy who spends all his time gaming/coding and has no time/ability/wherewithal to buy furniture or decor.
I understand that mentality but it’s a great car from the Toyota head space. There is nothing to break. In 70k miles on our MYP I have done nothing. Nothing except replace tires once. Never been to the shop. Averaging 280WH/mile. Nearly what they claim. It just goes and it’s fast AF.
That’s me for most electric cars. I’m not opposed to EV if it’s done well enough, but I don’t like the minimalist interiors dominated by screens.
I still hope Aptera produces their 3-wheelers someday as they’re the EV I like the most, but the only thing I don’t like about them is the interior, for the above reasons.
This has been my opinion since they started selling cars to the general public. Before I even knew a thing about Musk. On the basis of the interior alone, I would never buy one. But minimalism isn’t my thing in general.
Ditto. I loved the exterior styling of the original Model S, but any time I’ve even considered actually buying a Tesla I take one look at the interior and nope out.
The F40. Unless you like the looks like of sitting in a cheap subwoofer enclosure.
You know I’ve never been able to place what it made me think of until now, and this made it click.
I loved driving my 2003 Infiniti G35, but it’s interior was boring as crap. Just matte black plastic and almost nothing else on the dash. I had a couple of friends with 2003 Mazda 6’s, and the Mazda’s interior was an order of magnitude better.
The 2002-2005 “retro” Ford Thunderbird. I found the exterior to be handsome, the rwd V8 powertrain to be more than adequate, but the reworked Lincoln LS interior (with just a splash of color added for differentiation) to be totally out of sync with the exterior…
https://media.hagerty.com/media/wp-content/uploads/uscamediasite/images/story-images/2019/05/17/2002-ford-t-bird(5)20190517172240