It’s confession time; in my daily driving, I resent the drab gray interior of my mid-90s VW Golf. I also had a chance to board a modern Cadillac SUV recently, and its oppressive monotone black interior just made me wish for splashes of color. While the old interiors and ergonomics can’t hold a candle against today’s technology, I would welcome the return of more hues.
I know that recently there have been efforts to bring color back to cockpits. Let’s see if it happens. In the meantime, in the odd case that some car designer is perusing CC right now, there are a few suggestions from the past that I humbly submit further below. I’m not suggesting that these are all ‘tasteful’, but if you need inspiration for colorful interiors and patterns, the past is a good place to look.
Without further ado, here’s an incomplete and arbitrary set of colorful interiors with some brochure citations. Some have already appeared at CC previously, but one more look won’t hurt.
1958 Imperial Crown; “…the instant you step into an Imperial Crown you are softly lapped in luxury. You sink yourself into buoyant foam rubber cushions.”
1958 De Soto, with “styling that says ‘farewell’ to the past.”
1967 Ambassador DPL Hardtop with Morocco Brocade fabric.
The ‘Super Quiet’ 1973 Plymouth Satellite Sebring-Plus interior.
1973 AMC Brochure. From left to right: Gucci-interior, blue ‘Stripped Uganda’, and the cinnamon ‘Scorpio.’
1974 Plymouth Satellite Sebring Sundance.
1977 Citroen CX.
1978 Plymouth Caravelle; “Mid-size elegance.”
1978 Lincoln Mark V in Golden Jubilee Edition; “Destined to become a classic.”
And the Givenchy Edition.
1978 Renault 4 Safari Edition, “…practical, trendy, easy going and easy living.”
What’s with the open left door in most of these ads? It made the interior look insecure, like the door wouldn’t stay shut.
I long for the day when black is no longer dominant in interiors (and tires have sidewalls). I’ve actually come to miss gray.
The Golden Jubilee Mark V seats remind me of the multi-boobed statue of Artemis.
The open door makes the car look roomier.
I’m surprised that no manufacturer does one well-colored interior, and let the market take it where it will. Yes, there’s a chance it won’t go over well. There’s also the chance that it’ll be extremely popular.
I’d put the chances at 50/50
A while back my wife (or daughter) stated something along the lines of: “Automobiles have been built for over 100 years. In that time there have likely been countless advances in how to color fabrics in ways that were unheard of a century ago. So after all this progress what color is the most common? Black. The manufacturers need to challenge themselves.”
I told her the spirit of Henry Ford has infected the automotive interior designers.
Today, most everything is black or shades of gray.
Bill Blass & Emilio Pucci are turning over in their grave when they see what’s available at Lincoln nowadays!!
I second that! Think of these interiors what you will and I’m sure many wouldn’t want them, but they have color and aren’t depressing like the casket grays and blacks of today.
I bought the official-Honda-but hokey “Type R” floormats for my Fit because they’re bright red. That and nobody outside the car can see the Type R logos.
When given a choice, I typically seek out interiors other than black or gray when I’m shopping for a vehicle.
Which means I usually end up with beige/tan seats – but the rest of the interior is often black, except for the door cards and headliner. It’s also seems like it’s less common for carpets, seatbelts, dashboards and steering wheels to be a color other than black, unless it’s a luxury make.
How did black get to be the ONLY interior color available? It is HOT and shows dirt! Surely I’m not the only one who feels that the interior color is just as important as the exterior color.
By black showing “dirt”, you must mean things like lint. etc. which can be easily vacuumed off. Check out a used, light colored interior that has been thoroughly cleaned by a dealer. The driver’s seat is permanently grimy. Grime is forever on cloth seats.
Wow–I lived through all this, but it’s a little hard to believe these interiors were ever commonplace, just like the 1960s-70s interstate mileage signposts were dual-metric, because we were *certain* America would be going metric by the 21st century.
Open driver’s door: the Renault aside, I’ll just guess that it shows more of the door panel, and has some teeny psychological benefit of seeming “spacious,” “inviting,” whatever. Beats me?
Black is actually my favorite interior color. I am old enough to remember when black interiors became fashionable in the ’60s, especially with bucket seats. I loved a black Morrokide interior in a GTO, and that has stuck with me all these years. Plus, black doesn’t show ground-in dirt, so it stays looking good for longer than other colors.
Exactly !
Besides the utter lack of color and choice in modern car interiors, how about the cheap ass door panels!? even in mid-range cars Front door panels have a little bit of soft touch materiel while the back door panels are all hard plastic. And what about the sound deadening material that passes for carpeting? It makes the interior in the ’03 Chrysler PT Cruiser we had 15 years ago look and feel rich and inviting by comparison.
When looking at the 2003 Aztek I was to later purchase, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the factory seat fabric and door panels had a eye catching pattern! The cloth features angular geometric shapes in different tones of brown with highlights. Kinda neat. I can only assume Pontiac was trying to keep funky vibe moving to the interior, although the black and gray leather option is reminiscent of the inside of a prison bus.
Its Rendezvous platform-mate had Buick logos all over the cloth seats its first year.
“Nobody ever went broke underestimating the stupidity or poor taste of the average American.” However, many car companies were ruined by overestimating the publics tolerance for sorry build quality.
Hear hear!!
Some of these are great .
Growing up in the 1950’s when many vehicles still had cloth interiors taught me they get ruined easily by children and smokers .
I don’t like black, I prefer lighter colors like the green and off white vinyl in my 1958 VW Bug .
I also like the “Graphite” darker gray color in my 2002 Ford Ranger .
-Nate
Most people today get all of their color needs from computer and tv screens. Nearly all cars are grey scale in color and house interiors are off-white throughout. If people really wanted color in cars they would show their preferences in the market place.
How would Joe Consumer do that? The only alternative strong, vivid colors are only available in sports and muscle cars. If it’s not sold, we can’t buy it.
The seats in that Renault look like folding beach chairs. Makes a Chevette look like one of those Givenchy Marks in comparison.
They are pretty much like beach chairs, but they don’t fold. The Renault 4 was a competitor to the Citroen 2CV which has similar seats. There is a tube frame with a canvas panel supported by rubber loops attached to the frame. On cheaper models the padding just sits on top, as in this brochure. In fancier models the cloth extends down the sides to make it look more like a regular upholstered seat. All versions are surprisingly comfortable. I have never seen ones with that bolster along the front edge. It looks as if it is comfy.
In my 2CV when the rubber rings started to break so I replaced them and it was just as comfortable, but now I sit about an inch higher. It is a bit of an inconvenience as I now have to slouch a bit to see the traffic lights, as the top of the windshield is quite low.
Courtesy of Hemmings, here is a picture of a picnic using 2CV seats.
correct image
As Mike mentioned and everyone who’s ever had a Frech car knows, they do things _differently_ and don’t give a rat’s ass about how others do things .
Once you get past this and the weird styling, French cars are pretty damn good, incredibly comfortable and excellent handling slow or fast .
I loved my Pugs and 2CVs but not enough to keep them……
-Nate
People today get their color needs through computer screens and television. They are perfectly happy with vehicles that cannot be distinguished from other makes from a short distance away and home interiors that are painted in off-white throughout. If they wanted colors, the manufacturers would respond.
The lack of choices of exterior colors for most cars is kind of similar. We might be witnessing the death of capitalism. Or maybe, all of a sudden we’ll start seeing beautifully colored interiors available ONLY in electric cars, but not in cars with dirty ICEs.
Does no one else wonder where AMC came up with “uganda” as a descriptor for it’s vinyl interior?
Seems even weirder than “corinthian leather”.
Indeed, Of all the countries where vinyl might concievably be made, I must say Uganda doesn’t exactly spring to mind. They’d never call it that nowadays.
I must be ahead of my time – I remember hating black interiors the last time they were popular, starting in the mid 1960’s going into the early 70’s. At least then you had plenty of other options (unless you were stuck with it on an otherwise good used car, as happened to me on multiple occasions.)
There is nothing that juices me about an old car than a really well preserved original interior. Most of that stuff cannot be replicated today (except for the top-tier resto models where there are good reproductions). And most of those original materials were never designed to look good beyond 5 years, let alone 50+.
Additional thought: I never understood that thing Chrysler had in the 70s where the cloth fabric was pulled around the edges of the seat and back cushions – that Satellite Sundance is but one of many examples of that treatment they did. It always seemed to me that those edges were the highest wear areas when sliding in and out of the car. But then again, Chrysler’s vinyls of the period would split at every seam after about 6 years, so I don’t suppose it mattered.
Our “73 Plymouth Fury” has vinyl seats that held up quite well. We had that car till almost “1981”.
Evan the headliner stayed “relatively intact”.
The “73 Dart”, on the other hand , they vinyl seats in it were indeed fraying at that “six year mark”.
Both sat out in the weather; no covered parking or garages..
One of the enduring pleasures of my new used 2014 Mercedes GLK is the almost complete absence of the color black. The dash and steering wheel are trimmed in chocolate brown, not black. The exterior has none of the (fading) black plastic trim that’s plagued my previous cars. I no longer need that bottle of “Back to Black” that complicated every wax session.
Give me the tri-color high quality naugahyde seats in a 60-63 or so Pontiac! Those were beautiful and were made to last!
In recent times Fiat has offered some awesome interior colors. The problem is that you have to buy a Fiat to get them.
BLESS de soto? Sound like another possible entry for the cars and churches/religion post.
Here’s some colour for you, my 21 Challenger in Octane Red with the Ruby Red leather interior.
The 59 ADVENTURER interior was spectacular with swivel seats. Personal favorite interiors (which I have owned) are heavily tufted velour on 83 and 85 Fifth Avenues and 89 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham deElegance. Both were Grey. As for colors absolutely love deep red velour which I had in 80 Bonneville Brougham and 89 Crown Victoria LX. Seems lately leather in neutral colors is the top choice 🤔.
“Buoyant foam rubber cushions” for the rowboat in the background?
Describing above attributes of cars I’m surprised no one used the term “BPC”, black plastic crap.