Can you suffer an ugly interior?

How often do you find yourselves scouring the web for your perfect car. And suddenly you find it. Perfect exterior, low mileage, clean CARFAX, good price, but gasp...an ugly interior. I've run into this a lot with 944's. Burgandy interior cars seem to be good deals, but holy crap are they ugly. Is a good car worth a horrible interior?

Well, you can always re-upholster, right?

I dunno what it is, but a beige steering wheel makes me want to hurl. ~Shudder~

As long as it's comfortable and clean, even if it is ugly, I say go for it. Interior is a lot easier to fix than questionable mechanics.

Not that hard to change interior color.

I suffered with a LOT of eighties cars with a bland gray interior

The interior is the cheapest and easiest part of the car to restore/kustomize (assuming it's the color, not the ergonomics that you don't like). All the plastics can be painted black with some SEM interior paint. Re-covering the headliner, door panels, etc is child's play. The only real challenging or expensive part is the seat covers.

Drewsifer wrote: How often do you find yourselves scouring the web for your perfect car. And suddenly you find it. Perfect exterior, low mileage, clean CARFAX, good price, but gasp...an ugly interior. I've run into this a lot with 944's. Burgandy interior cars seem to be good deals, but holy crap are they ugly. Is a good car worth a horrible interior?

Buy two and swap the interiors around. Sell one for profit. Drink beer.

I've done it to a few RX-7's (I hate red interior).

Interior design is pretty low on my list of things that would stop me from buying a car. The interior must be really damaged, dirty, or uncomfortable to prevent me from buying it based on that alone.

Nothing better than a clean, unfaded porno red interior in an 80s or early 90s car!

Fox bodies, DSMs, G bodies, F bodies, all look great with a red interior!

My FC has an oh-so-80's blue interior. I'm too lazy to swap in a gray or black interior. Besides, the ultravelour seats are super-comfy!

I couldn't stand the blue in mine. Black interiors are hard to come by so I spray bombed the hell out of it. Sold it before I could swap out the seats.

I drive an old cop car (had blue seats, gray plastics, a drunkard rear seat, and a rubber floor when I bought it), an 80's sportscar (Porno Red velour all the way baby!), and a classic AMC (green vinyl with PLAID inserts!!!).

I am not qualified to say what is and is not a good interior...

That being said, gray or black interiors put me to sleep, I hate them. I love interiors with colors and contrast (the optional blue, red, and purple interiors in the 04-06 GTO's are near-perfection to me). I'm also a huge fan of a little color, especially the blues. Ford had one in the early 80's that was a light blue-gray that just hit the "relax and cruise" button like crazy.

I'm changing my RX-7's interior to black with bright red inserts and seats (Ferrari F360/430 style) and the cop car already has a straight gray cloth interior swapped in (that bores me to tears).

The worst part about the Fiero, despite what anyone says, is the interior!!! The layout screams 80's, the color options were terrible, over time the interior materials fade to different colors, and the materials used don't stand the test of time at all. Every Fiero I've been in have all smelled the same -- I think it is the smell of plastic death!

First project I started on with the car was the removal of the interior and replacement with something black, something more functional......and then the engine swap, suspension upgrades, LSD, etc........

But I wouldn't have done all the upgrades and left the interior alone -- the innards of those cars are ghastly, even by 80's standards!

I like plain, no-nonsense dashboards the best. Think original Viper, S2000, RX-7 FD. 80s cars like the 3rd gen F-body, RX7 FC, E30 and 944 look good to me. I don't care what the plastic feels like; I'm not sitting on it or rubbing all over it. However, interiors like the first interior for the C4 Corvette and the Fiero look bleh. 80s interiors = fine. 80s "futuristic" interior = bah. Futuristic interiors from the 50s and 60s looked good. Those Tron interiors of certain 80s cars look just weird.

I don't really want my interior to make a statement. I want something functional and comfortable above all else. I rather like tan interiors because its easy on the eyes. The exterior is what needs to get people to look at me . I don't know that I want to do a full interior swap, but I could do a stripped out one pretty easy. Sell the bits, buy the wife something so she doesn't start asking where another car came from.

My Wrangler is a Sahara edition with the tan interior. That means that the instrument cluster, steering wheel, center stack, shifter, transfer case handle and emergency brake handle are black. The rest of the dash, doors, carpet and floor console are tan. The painted steel is visible inside and is Desert Sand, the same as the exterior. And my seats are Forest Green. The tan and black looks cool right off the bat, it's the same tan/black combo of my exterior. Some people remark on the seats, some good, some bad. I originally planned on picking up some tan seats, but I ended up keeping the green. I like 'em.

I had this sweet perfect miata with bbs wheels... But it had a terrible red interior. So I sprayed it all black.

Joey

the interior of my ti was mostly black.. except for the a,b,and C pillars and the headliner.. those were gray.

They are now black

Yeah, this is low on my list of concerns too. I just bought a new, base-model Chevy Express cargo van with a "metal" interior. My race car has one seat. Both are fine by me.

When ever I think of bad interiors, I think of the TR7 and TR8 plaid seats.

I like that plaid.

I'm a fan of the second-gen MR2s and I've been seeing a few white hardtops around---the blue interior that they come with is almost starting to grow on me in a late 80s/early 90s kinda way.

I also like the plaid seats, but I own a GTI...

My buick had a blue interior with what looked like corduroy seats. It was total GM 80's style.

Subaru BRAT with blue plaid interior=awesome.

Simple solution to this dilemna: Gut it and cage it. Done.

Bobzilla wrote: Simple solution to this dilemna: Gut it and cage it. Done.

This.

Although hilariously, i ran across a maroon 5th gen Celica in the junkyard with a minty maroon/red interior. I sat there for about 2 hours faced with the decision if i wanted that 80s throwback awesomeness in my currently stripped black car. I think it would have looked sweet. But then... i couldn't justify spending $150 or so to make my car slower.

I like that red and plaid Tr7 interior too...