When Glen Waddington is not ensuring our magazine gets to the printers on time, our production editor can normally be found caressing car cabins…
I’m a trim-feeler. It’s what I do every time I get in a car I haven’t driven or ridden in before (and many that I have). Caress all those different plastic surfaces, finger the interior door handles, stroke the headlining. It goes further. Clunk-test the doors and glovebox, click-test the switchgear, snick-test the gearshift. Smack an elbow into the door trim, slap the dashtop.
Why? Don’t really know, can’t help myself. Something to do with perceived build quality. It’s strange then that cars I actually own – a 1997 Mazda MX-5 and a 2005 (old-shape) Ford Focus – don’t satisfy so much in that department. And yet the Mazda is about to clock up its 100,000th trouble-free mile, while the Ford (41,000 miles in 30 months) still feels as tight as the day it left the dealer.
Even stranger is why we’re all up in arms about Mercedes’ failure to inject the new C-class with the kind of interior pizzazz that floored so many Golf Mk4 owners. Fact is, Mercedes has never scored particularly high on the surprise and delight scale that VAG invented. Take a look inside a late-1970s Merc W123 (yes, there are plenty still around) and you’ll reckon that giant plastic dashboard moulding looks a bit, well, functional. Same goes for the SL roadster from the same era. Yet they keep on rolling. There were scares in the 1980s (inaccurate panel gaps on 190 saloons, 300Es with doors that took two slams to shut), yet prices of decent W124 estates are sky high and climbing. Because everybody misses the way they were built.
Posh trim is more to do with vanity than real quality, a bit of niceness you’d like to surround yourself with. And it’s so easy to fall for. The only real test of build quality is time. I’m not sure how our Focus will look in ten years, but I’d be interested to see how well the new C-class fares.
Reckon build quality and brand image go hand-in-glove? Want to get something off your chest about the cabin quality of your car? Hit the ‘Add Comment’ button below and start typing…