Interior as of the date of this article.
There's two basic types of people when it comes to this question: if you had to pick, would you rather have your car look like s*** on the inside or on the outside? A friend of mine mentioned that he wants to take care of the outside of his car before he starts working on the inside. I imagine most people are like that but consider this.
You want your car to have a 'wow' factor. If somebody doesn't notice anything special when they first see your car but they step into this interior...
They will probably be 'wow'ed.
I walked up to this gentleman with a raggedy looking old muscle car. I think it was an old Pontiac of some sort. Well, I asked him if it runs well. His response was "Get next to it and find out!" Implying that I should race him. Well he lifted the hood up and under it was a METICULOUS 350 engine. It looked like it had been rebuilt with everything spotless.
The feeling you get from that as an owner is the same reason people build sleepers. The satisfaction they get when you realize their stock-looking car is pushing a ton of power is what drives them. It's the reason anyone builds any type of car or even boat or airplane (ever seen fastest takeoff competitions? those things fly!).
And it's the same thing with looks. Personally, my car has to be running good mechanically before I will spend any money on fixing aesthetic things. As soon as it's running good, I'm starting on the exterior and interior. Of course, if I can do some things cheap or free, I'm going to.
And it's actually pretty cheap to get a good looking interior going.
My old car's (the black Lexus) seats were torn up and the interior was mostly a light brown which I thought was boring so I got black seat covers, painted the floor mats black, and reupholstered plus wrapped the center console black. It completely changed the way the car felt. Just that, which cost me about $60 for everything, made it very enjoyable to sit in the car again. It became clean and fresh again.
The amazing interior in the second picture actually mainly consists of covers and things you can order online for the LS400, such as the table and the dash cover. Still, the items in that picture are of a great quality and quite expensive.
I went another route with the new car. I kept the beige and instead of something VIP-like, I'm treading where no one has with these cars. It was around 06/15/2017 when I got the first car. During this whole time, my tastes really changed.
Lately, I've been inspired by drift cars and especially the Bosuzoku style of cars in Japan. I'm also a fan of function over form. I started wanting something that wasn't completely clean. Something that you can tell I put a lot of hours of work in, aswell.
After a while, I started noticing that things people haven't even really tried work very well sometimes. The idea is to apply all of the skill you have into customizing your interior, no matter if you are a complete amateur like me, and that work shows in the end. Just don't be afraid to throw away stuff that even you can tell looks like garbage but use what you learned to do it better. Don't put anything out there that you know looks like sh$#!
Listen, developing a skill is simple; you do it, maybe fail. Do it again, use what you learned from the mistakes you made last time, and get a slightly better product. Do this over and over again and you will eventually become a pro. It's just practice, people, and it's okay if your first few things look kinda crappy. But like I said, learn to do it better and re-do it.
If you follow these rules and don't lie to yourself, I promise your interior will come out good. It's patience, mainly.
Some of the things you will learn doing your own interior work;
- Being able to stitch a rip.
- Being able to create custom seat and dashboard covers; you can learn to truly upholster seats aswell. This is a trade.
- You will learn how to apply wraps.
- You will learn what to do and what not to do, as well as the best techniques, for detailing and cleaning your car.
- You will learn the use of different adhesives, cleaning chemicals, specific tools, different paints, and more.
- Applying tint shouldn't be a problem.
- You will learn patience or your quality will suffer.
- You will develop a sixth sense of how panels come off so you can do it in any car without a guide and without breaking anything.
- Depending how far you want to go, you can learn to install sound systems, nav systems or screens, and;
- You can learn to create your own interior panels which creates a one-off interior.
Let's look at this Honda Civic I saw today.
I think it was spray painted (good job), the bumper doesn't really align, and you will find small things like that if you look. But you know what?
It hauls. Butts. There's a boost gauge, the car has nice rims and tires, and I'm sure it's faster than prettier. But to me, it looks great just like that. It screams "I made a fast car... Oh the trim is off? Whatever, wanna race?" Pure fun - that's what this is about, people!
And not just from driving it. Just tinting your headlights, maybe changing out the shifter... You get the sense that the car is evolving and it's getting better with time.
It's inspirational if you are a car enthusiast. I've had depression my whole life, just about, and it's severe now. My happiest moments? Driving the car when it's driving good (it's okay right now, has a small misfire issue - my neurons, I mean). Finishing stitching together a seat cover. Installing LEDs all inside the car. All of these things take my mind off the copious amounts of BS that life sometimes throws at you.
You gotta have that something unique, even if it's hanging on your rear-view mirror. The scorpion was given to me by my beautiful, loving wife and it fit the theme. For me, it represents the sting or power that spirituality (in my case) can have. I always say I'm not trying to preach to anyone who doesn't want to hear it; I am talking about a part of my car that is obviously going to reflect my character.
You gotta admit, it just looks cool.
As far as what's next, you know, I'm not really sure right now. The back seats are in good condition so there's no reason to touch them, I'm using the leather headrests too so there's enough leather in the front to prevent the tweed seats from looking out of place.
I am frequently thinking of painting, yes, painting the carpet beige with vinyl paint. Reason being is that for whatever reason, the passenger side of the car's carpet is dark brown from all the stains. There is some in the back as well and a good cleaner only made it somewhat better.
I figure I can cover everything like the seats and dash in plastic painters cover. Re-painting the whole carpet - at least what you can get to and see without having to look for it - might be the only way to bring it back to looking like new again. It's bad in some parts, really.
And so are a few other things that vinyl paint works on aswell. The armrest on the door is especially dirty so spraying all of those maybe some sort of Maple-brown would greatly restore the doors' appearance. Maybe not Maple-brown, I'm just saying, a tone that fits the car really well, maybe matching the console or something which is a darker redwood in my car.
You can see one of the LEDs in this one and the car is also lit up by the top light. These LEDs make at least five times the light.
All of this is still rolling around my head so I will let you people know when I get some more of this done. Tell me what you think about the seats. Some are gonna scream blasphemy! because they're not tight or whatever. Look at it without those goggles that say "worth = value" if you know what I'm saying. Dang, I'm an automotive philosopher and I never knew. I personally love the seats. Like I said, cheap car seat covers are NOT for me.
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