Originally posted by baco99:
my problem with US interiors is that the panel fit always sucks. even on a vette. a friend of mine has a 2003, and the gaps are never the same throughout the whole dash/door.



OK, I'll agree with that. But as long as the fit is reasonably close, I could care less about panel fit. I'm not gonna take a ruler and measure the panel gap difference and complain that it may be 1 mm off here or there. Who cares? If there's a big difference, and things are crooked and tweaked, and you can see it, then yeah, I'll complain. But I haven't seen that on an American car since my '83 T-bird.

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the only redeeming interior piece of a vette is seating. vette seats are really nice.



Not on a Z06 they're not!!! I love the car, but probably one of my biggest complaints is how much the Z06 seats suck. Mind you, they are not the same sport seats that are in the regular C5, which are better, but still not great. My complaint centers around the lack of side bolster support, and they're a bit too soft for my taste. They are comfortable on long trips though. But my Contour's seats are way more supportive.

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foreign interiors are never exciting, but they fit together and don't come apart.



I guess its a matter of preference then: boring interiors that have close panel gaps and accuracy, or exciting interiors that may have a few flaws here and there. I choose the latter, because I don't like boring things.

As for coming apart: I've found U.S. interiors last longer and wear better than Japanese car interiors (at least on Fords anyway - GM stuff is questionable). Case in point: I remember years ago my friend had an '86 Maxima that was about 7 years old at the time and just turned 100k. The dashboard was warped and had big cracks in it, some of the switches and buttons that were painted had the paint worn off, a lot of the interior stuff didn't work anymore, the seat fabric was really worn, and everything just looked tired and worn.

My '96 Contour is the same age now, and has more mileage. The dashboard still fits together perfectly - no warps, no cracks anywhere. None of the buttons have the paint worn off. The leather still looks good. Everything still works. There's no wear spots on the armrests or anything. The only signs of a little wear are: 1) the steering wheel leather has discolored where I always keep my hands, 2) there is a slight rub mark on the driver's seat leather where the seat belt always rubs it, and 3) the paint on the turn signal stalk is starting to wear off. That's it! Everything else, the interior still looks like new.

We'll see how well my G35's interior wears. I suspect all that painted titanium colored trim will look like hell in a few years. I don't know what is with that fad now with silver colored trim anyways - I thought we already went through that in the '80s?

I think the best interiors belong to Audi, Volkswagen, Jaguar, and BMW. I have no idea how well they hold up, but they sure do look nice new.

'96 Contour SE, 130k, traded 6/19/03 for: '03 Infiniti G35 Coupe , Diamond Graphite '02 Corvette Z06, Electron Blue Pic