Even the "real" wood cracks, most of it is now just a vinear(sp?)thin layer adhesived on same as the "fake' stuff...some of the "fake" stuff may actually be more durable, and less likely to scratch etc...
Things I disliked about Chevy interiors were :
1)weak door pulls, always breaking, cheap material, or wrong materials.
2)Lack of good, custom fitting floor mats, in everything, not just optional.
3)brittle dash material, cracking b/c of heat, or when bumped when cold.
4)sagging headliners, why use a sponge backing you know will deteriorate.
5)cheap "looking" plastic buttons and *****...plastic is fine, just polish it or something..and the writing wearing off buttons, or button faces getting brittle and popping off.
6)leather seats that crack and wrinkle all to he!! and color wore off....

GMC, Pontiac and Buick were always a notch better, probably why people like them a lot. Better material, better design, better layout and function...why?

Japanese interiors were bland to me, but more space efficient in a lot of cases.

Think GM vehicles had bad interiors, I've own some '80's Chryslers... talk about "nickel and diming you to death"...

 

I also think one thing that gets confused too is "visual design" and "material/build quality". A GMT-800 dash will never give you issues and is built decently....but the fact that it is ugly as sin kills any hope it has.

 

True, Visual Design is truly only an OPINION of the user. I agree material/build quality is important. But even this is hard, or soft, or rough? (bad use of words, LOL)

I tend to like the hard plastic feel and looks as it gave a cockpit type of feel to it. My only problem is damn they rattled everywhere. My 05' GP is the quitest and coolest Interior I've seen in awhile. Love it.

 

Am I one of the few people that doesn't like wood, fake or otherwise, in the interior?

 

No, I don't like it either.

 

If it'd done right, I like it. That means I like very little of the wood, real or otherwise, that's currently offered.

We've got an interior part at work that we supply to a American luxury brand that's crafted from real wood in Italy, and it's eye-poppingly beautiful (made so much more obvious by the lesser-quality materials that surround it). It's also shockingly expensive, even for a $45K car, and there's enough other faults with said vehicle that one is left wondering if the money should have been spent elsewhere.

 

Every Lexus model made today uses real wood (or no wood at all), and they make sure that the pieces that go into each car all came from the same tree, and same finishing batch so that the color and grain matches. It's nice and all, but it's freakin EXPENSIVE to replace if your original one gets damaged. Just for S&G I priced the wood trim around my center console/shift area (as seen in the lower right of this pic) and it was $725 at the dealership, ordered direct from Yamaha's Piano wood division in Japan.

I personally hate fake wood, real wood is usually 'ok' but for my money I'd rather have aluminum/cf/or just plain old trim that doesn't try to look like anything more expensive than it is.

 

Didn't you say some interior part in your GS was from a Camry?

 

Cruise control stalk. Why? I don't get it.

 

I'll give you one major thing I hate about the GMT-800's.. the inner door panel.. on my Avalanche. first, they are flimsy.. they budge around and squeek if you grand and push with your hand and your knees... the backdoors of my Avalanche seem to be much worse. This is especially annoying when haivng people in the back of my Avalanche, and their knees squeeking against the door panel, especially supporting themselves in a turn. Squeek squeek.


The door handles are these pieces of pastic that gape out of these huge door handles.. in fact one of my coworkers even commented when he first stepped inside that the door was broken/missing a trim piece. lol

And nitpicking, you can see some flash/ragged cut stuff on the edges on the trim piece where the rear seatbelts go into the pillar.


There's also an odd squeek somewhere in the rear passanger area of my Av.. and occasioanlly some wind noise.. But you know what, the only reason I'm complaing about this, is cause the actual truck is so dang comfortable and quiet, that you actually start noticing these odd minor squeeks!


I let my friend borrow it for a week. He owns an Audi, and his parents and bro's have Mercedes and BMW's.. He started with the preconception of hating all SUV's, but after the week and a few roadtrips, he admitted he turned around and now likes it for its comfort and quietness on the road, and begin to see why people like SUV's (but he'll still won't get one)..


Same goes with other GM cars I've rented lately.. They may look kinda ugly.. But they are functional, and surprisingly quiet.. I think sometime around 2000 they must have found a way to put them together a bit better so they didn't squeek and rattle.

and the newer interiors now go another step foward and making them look much better (although the new GMT900 dash's loook too carlike in the pics I've seen, but reserve final judgement till I see them IRL).

 

What a waste of money. I don't really need any wood in my car, let alone a $725 piece of it.

 

I agree though I'm sure Lexus' true cost on it is less than 10% of that at worst. Seems like a lotta OEM replacement parts; particularly those not commonly needed for purchase like various interior parts, clips, etc can be WAY more expensive than they should have cost the manufacture to put in your car when it was first made. If something happened to the wood in my car I would just go without any trim. I'd never even pay half that for that trim. I could see maybe up to 150... that's about it.