What happened to modern interiors? Why are they mostly dull?
Discussion
This affect seems fairly universal across almost all makes, models and from every country. Most modern interiors on the whole are bilge...
dull, dank, dingy boring affairs that are obviously designed to make you fall asleep should you look at them for more than 20 seconds.
It wasn't always this way. Ok, there are a few modern cars this might not apply too, but on the whole unless you looking at a Bentley or a Ferrari it is true.
Interiors used to be fun, interesting, cool and entertaining or just sumptuous. Now it's just a sea of grey and black plastic and pretty much the same basic dash shape in most cars, with no personality.
Example.
What an awesome looking interior!!
vs
yawn....
vs
vs
vs
vs
vs
dull, dank, dingy boring affairs that are obviously designed to make you fall asleep should you look at them for more than 20 seconds.
It wasn't always this way. Ok, there are a few modern cars this might not apply too, but on the whole unless you looking at a Bentley or a Ferrari it is true.
Interiors used to be fun, interesting, cool and entertaining or just sumptuous. Now it's just a sea of grey and black plastic and pretty much the same basic dash shape in most cars, with no personality.
Example.
What an awesome looking interior!!
vs
yawn....
vs
vs
vs
vs
vs
I concur that many modern interiors are very drab but none of your "old" examples are humdrum ordinary cars of that time, whereas all of your "new" ones are. For example a Morris Marina had an interior that was awful, as did every other mainstream s
tbox my dad ever had. A modern Astra has an interior with far more appeal than a Mk1/Mk2 and so on.
If you look at modern sports cars and high end cars you can specify some really classy and tasteful interior colour schemes and there are some interesting designs. It's not the manufactures fault if every drone picks "coal bunker black" for his company vehicle.
tbox my dad ever had. A modern Astra has an interior with far more appeal than a Mk1/Mk2 and so on.If you look at modern sports cars and high end cars you can specify some really classy and tasteful interior colour schemes and there are some interesting designs. It's not the manufactures fault if every drone picks "coal bunker black" for his company vehicle.
dme123 said:
I concur that many modern interiors are very drab but none of your "old" examples are humdrum ordinary cars of that time, whereas all of your "new" ones are. For example a Morris Marina had an interior that was awful, as did every other mainstream stbox my dad ever had. A modern Astra has an interior with far more appeal than a Mk1/Mk2 and so on.
If you look at modern sports cars and high end cars you can specify some really classy and tasteful interior colour schemes and there are some interesting designs. It's not the manufactures fault if every drone picks "coal bunker black" for his company vehicle.
I agree, not all old/older cars have nice interiors. But plenty did. And it's mainly not about the tactile feel, but the visuals.tbox my dad ever had. A modern Astra has an interior with far more appeal than a Mk1/Mk2 and so on.If you look at modern sports cars and high end cars you can specify some really classy and tasteful interior colour schemes and there are some interesting designs. It's not the manufactures fault if every drone picks "coal bunker black" for his company vehicle.
This looks pretty good for a non high end car, albeit a sporting one.
And as basic as this is, at least it isn't boring to look at..
Fartgalen said:
I like the look of all of those interior pics.
Me too. If you were trying to demonstrate new interiors as boring, then you could pick way worse than those ones. The Z3 is the most boring out that list, but that's a 90's car, not modern.The Golf(?) interior is boring, but that's exactly what Golf owners want isn't it. The theme carries on through the entire car.
Edited by BuzzBravado on Wednesday 26th August 16:31
Safety I imagine, I think you also need to compare a time/car set when interiors were known to be bad. Everyone harps on about how terrible humdrum 80's cars (my 205 was terrible for example) or 90's Japanese car's interiors are, putting those up against the oldies you've highlighted will garner the same opinion I feel.
300bhp/ton said:
And as basic as this is, at least it isn't boring to look at..
If this was your car, day in day out for years when it was new, that interior would seem very dull. It's only nostalgia/lack of familiarity that makes it interesting.I also think interiors date a car more than anything else, stuff that may seem interesting now may be rather naff in a few years, so people play it safe.
300bhp/ton said:
I agree, not all old/older cars have nice interiors. But plenty did. And it's mainly not about the tactile feel, but the visuals.
This looks pretty good for a non high end car, albeit a sporting one.
And as basic as this is, at least it isn't boring to look at..
Fiat Coupe had a price range of £18K - £25k in 1995 so the equivalent of £30k - £44k adjusted for inflation so a very similar price range to a Z4 today. Z4 interior:This looks pretty good for a non high end car, albeit a sporting one.
And as basic as this is, at least it isn't boring to look at..
That's not boring and drab, any preference is down to personal taste. It could be drab in black but you can specify all sorts of interesting finishes if you like, so you can make it much more personal to you and your car than the Fiat.
I'd also argue that the Anglia only looks interesting to the modern eye because it's so very minimalist. It would also be very likely to injure you in an accident!
Quirky and different don't sell well for mass market is the conventional wisdom. So Citroen stopped making cars with aggressively self centring steering, eyeball speedometers and the radio next to the handbrake, Alfa don't put the electric window switches on the headlining any more etc.
berlintaxi said:
300bhp/ton said:
Interiors used to be fun, interesting, cool and entertaining or just sumptuous. Now it's just a sea of grey and black plastic and pretty much the same basic dash shape in most cars, with no personality.
Example.
What an awesome looking interior!!
vs
yawn....
Example.
What an awesome looking interior!!
vs
yawn....
The SL is glorious, that new C-Class (or whatever it is) is a chintzy mess with an iPad randomly plopped on the dash.
lostkiwi said:
berlintaxi said:
Well how about comparing apples with apples for a kick off, the current SL dash, not at all boring in my opinion;
It's typical 300BHP trolling pick 2 extremes to suit your argument.
They must have got a job lot of buttons....It's typical 300BHP trolling pick 2 extremes to suit your argument.
This is twice in one day I'm agreeing with you 300, I hope it's not the start of a worrying new trend! 
Modern interiors may be of better quality then the hum drum stuff from the 80\90's but they all seem to be melding into an amalgam of the same dull design. Swathes of plastic with the odd bit of plastic accent\highlight in an attempt to make it look more posh and every button\switch ergonomically designed to within an inch of it's life means they are all starting to look pretty homogeneous.
What's happened to all the unique touches that immediately told you what car you were in? Where are the hooded instrument cowls, the unique switchgear or the unique steering wheel Parts bin sharing has done away with most of it. Yes you can make a car more unique but you have to pay an inordinate amount of money to do so, the interior on my current car is very nice but it's got a LOT of options ticked, sports seats, two tone leather, extended leather, leather armrest etc which the original owner must have paid an absolute fortune for and so called "premium cars" seem to be the worst culprit for this. How many people can really afford to go to town on all the options to lift the interior?
I think the last time I was pleasantly surprised by the interior of a relatively ordinary car was in a Alfa 159 about 10 years ago.
Modern interiors may be of better quality then the hum drum stuff from the 80\90's but they all seem to be melding into an amalgam of the same dull design. Swathes of plastic with the odd bit of plastic accent\highlight in an attempt to make it look more posh and every button\switch ergonomically designed to within an inch of it's life means they are all starting to look pretty homogeneous.
What's happened to all the unique touches that immediately told you what car you were in? Where are the hooded instrument cowls, the unique switchgear or the unique steering wheel Parts bin sharing has done away with most of it. Yes you can make a car more unique but you have to pay an inordinate amount of money to do so, the interior on my current car is very nice but it's got a LOT of options ticked, sports seats, two tone leather, extended leather, leather armrest etc which the original owner must have paid an absolute fortune for and so called "premium cars" seem to be the worst culprit for this. How many people can really afford to go to town on all the options to lift the interior?
I think the last time I was pleasantly surprised by the interior of a relatively ordinary car was in a Alfa 159 about 10 years ago.
Problem with lighter colours of leather, whilst in many case looking good and giving more light into the car, it doesn't age as well as darker colours such as black. There was an option for stone leather when I purchased my car and I really liked it, however knowing this would be my work car and would get dirty and that I would at times be getting in it dirty, black was the far more sensible choice. Stone would soon have ended up with ground in stains in all the creases.
Many dashboards these days look like they are designed to be easily switched for left/right hand drive markets.
Many dashboards these days look like they are designed to be easily switched for left/right hand drive markets.
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