It's The Interiors, Stupid

It's The Interiors, Stupid
Jerry Flint
Forbes.com

A few years ago, I was at a Detroit auto show looking at an exotic prototype. It was a strange-looking thing, but the word was that General Motors was going to build it. The interior of that show vehicle was different, exciting and loud. I expressed my admiration to one of the interior designers standing there. "That interior could make the car something special," I said.

The designer shrugged sadly. "They probably wouldn't use it. They would take the interior 'off the shelf,' " he said. It turns out that designer was right.

Another time I was talking to an important General Motors (nyse: GM - news - people ) executive when he mentioned "the coal mine." It took me a bit of time to figure out that he was describing the interior of his own GM cars. The coal mine: universally dark and dismal.

I also remember when my wife said to me, "No one spends an hour or two walking around looking at the outside of her car. But we spend countless hours on the inside."

In short, interiors count. And that's where Detroit--GM, Ford Motor (nyse: F - news - people ) and DaimlerChrysler's (nyse: DCX - news - people ) Chrysler division--have badly lagged the foreign competition. I'm happy to report, however, that there are signs the U.S. manufacturers are finally getting the message.

Look at the new Chrysler 300C sedan, which just went on sale. This car has a well-executed dashboard, and the fit and finish of interior materials are much closer to world-class than almost anything else from the domestics.

Wait until you see new Ford Mustang this fall. It has been decades since I've seen a dashboard or an interior on an American car as polished and as sexy as that of the Mustang. Ford figures on selling 180,000 new Mustangs a year, but I think that they'll do better--lots better. The inside of Ford's new F-150 big pickup isn't bad either, though Ford took a lot of fire from Wall Street analysts on the higher production costs of this model. Ford also did a nice job--though a bit retro--on the interiors of the Lincoln Navigator and Aviator SUVs.

GM trails Ford and Chrysler in interiors. The coming Saab 9-7 sport utility has the first GM interior done in the U.S. that really satisfies Robert Lutz, GM's vice chairman and product czar. But Saab is a European nameplate, so the trick for GM is to transfer some of this pizzazz to its U.S. brands.

American designers shouldn't necessarily try to mimic European or Japanese interiors. Fit, finish and quality are important, but American cars should reflect what makes them uniquely American. Today's U.S. cars have lost all that bold, brash attitude of the cars of the 1950s and 1960s.

The standard colors of American interiors today are mouse gray and mud brown, with some black thrown in on the luxury models. I say we should ban mouse gray and mud brown.

I also say we should forget leather. Are you shocked? Leather has become boring unless it's orange or red, but we've forgotten how to do that except at some outlandish price. We have wonderful textiles today. They are long-lasting and colorful. Stop killing all those cows.

And why can't the interior seats, sides, floor mats and the dash match the color of the exterior paint? When I was a boy I would go visit Ford's assembly plant in Dearborn. I still remember the red seats dropping into the red car and the blue seats dropping into the blue car and the tan seats dropping into the white car, and they didn't even have computers back then to figure out how to match up all the pieces.

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