davyjordi

i loved the interior of the a8, although the entire audi lineup was remarkably well put together. the build quality is fantastic. i'm keeping a close eye on the a4 which will likely be my next vehicle purchase.

the cadillac ct6 was exceptional, although, again, the cadillac (interior) lineup was also very well built.

i did get a chance to see the new continental and i didn't care for it. i thought there was an unnecessary amount of chrome nearly everywhere i looked. it came across as gaudy.

mmarshall

For its class, Audi wrote the book on interior fit/finish. It has only been in recent years that its competitors started catching up.

Part of that was the deliberate intention on Lincoln's part (the company admitted as such)....on the Continental, to bring back the traditional American luxury that's been missing for so long. They tried producing what were essentially muted, redone Fords, and it simply didn't work...although the new Continental's basic platform, mechanically, is not much different from that of the Taurus.

Toys4RJill

Some of the more interesting GM interiors.

Duck05

The interior on our SC is identical and takes to being "upgraded" just fine!!!

UDel

What interior is the 2nd and 3rd one from with the buttons on the wheel? It looks like possbily a mid 90's Bonneville which had a similar interior. I remember some concept car interiors from the mid to late 80's with really cool interiors, I am going to look for some pics of them to post up, I remember seeing some great concept cars at a auto show in 1991, saw the Pontiac Banshee, Buick Wildcat, Corvette Indy, Peugeot Oxia, Oldsmobile supercar, Cadillac Solitaire, and a few others, I have a few photos I took of them.

mmarshall

That is a 1991 Pontiac Grand Prix.

Fizzboy7

I remember when those came out. It was a major safety hazard. When in a panic or emergency situation, people would be smashing all those buttons trying to activate the horn. Terrible idea. Horn should always be in the center of the steering wheel, where everyone expects it to be.

Coleroad

I had a Grand Prix with all the controls in the steering wheel. The horn wasn't an issue your thumb was all that had to move. It's a like my Land Rover is just reach with my thumbs. My hands never leave the steering wheel then. Actually it made it easier to control the radio and such without taking your eyes and hands away from driving.

mmarshall

Back in the late 1980s (or was it early 90s?), when auto manufacturers were using buttons on the wheel-spokes for the horn, I sent the NHTSA Chief a letter (before the E-Mail/Internet age) that suggested a Federal mandate on all new American-spec cars stating that the horn pad MUST be in the center of the steering wheel. I also, in the letter, for safety-purposes, suggested banning rigidly-attached side-mirror housings and requiring either folding/hinges or breakaway springs to allow the housings to swing back and forth. He wrote back and stated that he thought both were good ideas, but that, to actually make it a regulation would be unnecessarily restrictive on auto manufacturers. The true reason, of course, why the horn-buttons and mirror-housings were designed like that was cost-cutting. Obviously, it is cheaper and easier to have one-piece mirror-housings than to install the extra moving parts with them, and, on the steering wheel, to avoid the complications of putting both the horn pad AND the Drivers' air-bag assembly together inside the center of the wheel. At that time, air bags were just starting to be installed on a large, industry-wide scale, and many automakers simply wired the horn controls into the spokes to avoid the air-bag assembly under the center-pad. Toyota, I believe (and, IMO, they deserve credit for this) , was the first major auto manufacturer to bite the bullet, even without a formal regulation, and put both the horn control and air-bag assembly under the center-pad as standard equipment in all of its new American-spec cars? And their reward from me and my family?. I went car-shopping with my (late) mother in the mid-90s...she took home a new Corolla DX station wagon, and I took home a new Celica ST.

mmarshall

What you say about thumb/finger movement is correct, but I have to agree with Fizzboy. In a split-second-emergency (and I've had a few of those myself over the years) the average driver is going to automatically and impulsively, without thinking, pound on the center of the steering-wheel pad. Back then, doing so, on many mass-produced vehicles would reward you with...........silence. Thats's why, IMO, (as I stated above) I think Toyota deserves credit for taking the lead and breaking that mold. Today of course, virtually all new vehicles come that way, even without a formal regulation......the public simply expects it.

dseag2

Nice setup! I had no idea the technology could be so upgraded. (Of course, it probably couldn't in '01 when I sold my '99 SC300.) I had my complete sound system upgraded. If I could have had these upgrades as well I would have probably kept it. Timelessly beautiful car, and they run forever!

Aron9000

Almost any old car that has a double DIN radio opening(like the SC300) can easily accept a new aftermarket touch screen radio that has all the latest tech like navigation, blue tooth music streaming, blue tooth calling, apple car play, etc. Personally I'm a bit too cheap to upgrade to something like that $500 touch screen pictured and didn't want to ruin the original look on the dash with a cheapie double din radio. I do have a dedicated aux port wired into the stock headunit, works fine. I have a $150 double din radio in my truck that does bluetooth calls and streams bluetooth music from my phone though, price of tech has come way down.

Going back to muscle cars, most of them had very basic, cheap interiors from economy cars. Things like idiot lights instead of real gauges, no tachometers were common, as this stuff was optional, or not even an option in some cases. One of the cars that I thought actually quite nice inside was the Dodge Charger. The dash layout with a big round speedo, optional tach/clock, just the clean look of the dash was great

GSMiura

Audi's all the way...Sorry.

mmarshall

Actually, during that period (late 60s), the Chrysler and AMC interiors, though with some nice features to them, lacked the assembly-quality that was in the Ford and GM interiors. GM, especially, did a nice job inside with good fit/finish and attention to detail. The Chrysler interiors tended to have a lot of loose-fitting hard plastic that squeaked/creaked and rattled, and their noise-isolation inside was sub-par from the torsion/leaf suspensions and unibodies which transmitted a lot of road noise. This was, of course, compensated for by the extreme durability of the Chrysler engines and automatic transmissions.

Although the compact-sized Dart/Duster/Demon R/T, all of the pony cars, Rambler-Scrambler (remember that one LOL?), and Nova SS were marked exceptions, most of the classic muscle-cars of that era (including your Charger) were done off of mid-sized sedan/coupe platforms, not entry-level economy cars. Which makes sense.....the original muscle car of the 1960s was the Pontiac GTO, a large-engined version of the intermediate-sized Pontiac Tempest. So, most of the muscle-cars actually had mid-level-grade interiors, not those of compact/economy cars. The mid-sized Plymouth Road Runner, though (whose bird-graphics, bright colors, and "Beep-Beep" horn I always liked, even though it was mid-sized, could be considered cheap, since base versions were quite devoid of basic equipment, and were designed to sell at a low price. Partly because of its low price, it was the first muscle-car (discounting the hot-selling Mustang pony-cars) to seriously challenge the sales of the legendary Pontiac GTO.

BTW....I enjoy discussing topics like this with you, Aron. You're one of the people on this forum who seems to know your stuff when it comes to cars of that era. I myself grew up those cars, and learned to drive on them.

chromedome

The LFA has my second favorite interior. I love the hard horizontal lines and the no-nonsense feel of it, like a Japanese 911 interior but with loads of carbon fiber and leather. My ES is a really cheap imitation of that and that makes me happy

My favorite interior has to be the one in the new Panamera: the clean gauges and that swooping center stack and tunnel make it look like an Airbus cockpit.