As you get older, you tend to care more about this stuff.

Yes, people care about how it feels.

I reckon the average person cares much more about this while enthusiasts are likelier to find it in them to forgive a car with an interior having happy meal toy grade plastics if the cars dynamics are decent enough

It’s one of the five core senses and if I’m going to be spending $30k+ on something i better be getting all five of them.

Some people do care more about that than driving dynamics. I’d say the majority do. But I agree it sounds weird to be thinking of people groping their dash, i hardly ever interact with mine at all.

Perhaps because they have little to talk about. Nobody puts the car through its paces through varying conditions, almost nobody talks about technical aspects (unless it is about infotainment 😄), and nobody is in a position to talk about ownership aspects due to their limited time with the car. So all they have are tidbits like these, to sound thorough.

Am rather linking ‘The Car Care Nut Reviews’ YT channel, however, as there is at least some useful technical content there.

I notice immediately when I’m in a car with hard plastics. They reflect more and when I need to touch them they don’t feel nice.

My Lexus doesn’t have a single piece of hard plastic in it, not even the A B or C pillars, or even all the way under the dashboard or under the console lid, seriously not a single piece. All soft touch panels.

NOW, would the majority of people notice that? Probably not, but the auto industry has made it seem that cars with materials like that are to be perceived as “fancy” and upscale (I fell for it and agree lol). The people pushing on all that stuff are reviewers and if it’s not up to spec, prepare for “middling interior quality” comments from them.

Interior materials was the big reason why I didn’t buy a BMW M440i. Shitty feeling and shitty fitted vinyl seats and rattly piano gloss plastic, and things like the seat belt loop stalk made out of cheap injection molded plastic.

Just a bunch of rattle, ugly, breakable junk in a $70k+ car.

Of course this is important.

It is simply about comparing sets of (expected) features at some sort of price point. And a car review has to appeal to the widest possible audience. All sorts of people buy cars for all sorts of reasons. And cars are expensive (compared to income) especially new cars and of those especially mass market cars that are mostly used for their utility of moving people from point A to B.

Buying a car is also by a great margin an emotional decision, and this may often come down to very small deciding factors, which cannot be universally quantified. And thus a car review points your attention to all those small factors that might be the deciders. Interior colors, materials and build quality is one such thing.

Interior look and feel was a major component in me choosing an ND Miata over the NC.

I want the contact points for my car to be comfortable. I want this seats to be relatively soft leather, but supportive. I want the steering wheel to have a certain feel, not too wouldn’t have plastic, and I want the Tactical controls to feel solid, plastic-y.

Since we all spend a considerable amount of time inside the car, these are all important things. Would you buy furniture that make you itchy? A carpet that hurt your feet? A mattress that was too stiff or too soft to sleep on?

Me - I can tell shitty plastics from soft touch from leather wrapped and alcantara, etc. Not that I can’t stand cheap interiors - the GE8 Honda Fit I had once is probably the lowest grade interior of any car I’ve bought new. But it had a leather wrapped steering wheel, which is the single biggest factor a driver will notice as you’re always in contact with that. Miles of cheap plastic beyond that.

Drove a loaner Porsche Macan low spec the other day and the difference is night and day to a well specced Porsche interior with leather/race-tex/deviated stitching, etc. And believe me they’ve mastered the art of nickel and diming customers into a long list of options.

One thing I actually prefer is leatherette/vinyl seats - they’re far easier to maintain vs. leather.

I’m by no means obsessed with it, but once you go beyond your basic economy cars, I do expect some nicer plastics, panels, and dash materials.

I don’t mind harder plastics on the bottom of door panels or areas that might get more abuse, that makes sense. But at the prices cars go for now, I expect decent materials that are fitted together well

Yes. That’s where you can get a sense of how serious the manufacturer is about some things. Take a look at the interior of a Citroen C1 and put it against a Nissan Micro for instance. These things matter. A lot of people don’t really notice it, but do notice why some cars ‘feel’ more luxurious. I always thought of it to be kind of nagging, until I had a Lexus CT200h (with leather knee pads on the middle console) and traded it in for a Mitsubishi Outlander (with … well… seats.)