#Leather

Ted writes:

Hi Sajeev,

I’m about to get a new Golf R and everyone complains about the boring VW Golf design thingamajiggit. Yes. I find the boring classic outside to be comforting. I’m in it for the longevity of the design and body, and want to keep this until it dies or 10 years; I intend to ceramic coat the Lápiz Blue. It’s a manual, of course, and when the clutch eventually dies I may replace with a tougher version and chip it.

What I don’t like, and a major strike against the R in my mind, is that the interior is so dark as to make the interior basically invisible.

TTAC commentator kericf writes:

Sajeev,

I know you experienced the deluge of rain in Houston (Last October, and it was pretty bad. —SM). We live on the north side of the city and own a six-month-old 2015 Ford Expedition EL that has been outside its whole life (it doesn’t fit in the garage). It has seen much heavier rain than we had this weekend, but not a storm that lasted so long.

Water somehow got into the headliner and dropped into the interior. It does have a sunroof and roof rack. The dealership has only had it a day but hasn’t been able to figure out the source of the leak. It hasn’t leaked before. We are baffled and I have a feeling the dealership will be too.

A Kia Sportage owner in the UK was in for a surprise after he found out that the “full leather” interior in his Kia Sportage was actually “…mainly plastic or vinyl.”

True Miles Unknown. For some folks these three words conjure up the fear of a car with more miles on it than the Grateful Dead. Others simply head on off to Carfax and try to approximate the mileage figure.