The Avalon leather is nothing new. You still have to kill a cow and process it.

NuLuxe, albeit synthetic, is, with a positive spin, revolutionary. It is not cheap stuff. But for the eco-minded, people will pay extra for the value of being cruelty-free.

And I surely will prefer NuLuxe standard than cloth.

It's one of the best synthetic options on the market. Surely much better than any synthetic seat I've sat on (and I've had a CT rental for six weeks now).

 

And those top of the line Priuses now have "premium environmentally friendly synthetic upholstery".....AKA, fake leather

Ours has the base cloth. It would have been thousands more to have the fake leather, and I can have AutoTrim switch our entire interior over to heated (real) leather, including door panels and center console, for about 1500 bucks. Which I offered to have done, but my wife prefers the cloth.

 

The most annoying thing about NuLuxe is the fact that the uppermost trims of the car HAVE TO HAVE leather before the most loaded packages can be picked.

For those that work at Lexus dealers, is there a way you can get NuLuxe and the top of the line packages?

 

An example, would I pay $4000 for a leather upgrade just based on material, likely not unless the that additional price was a smaller % of the total sales price, such as on a $300k car…. On a 60k car, no.

I would pay for having a custom color choice or design change in the material. A point for what I would pay more for and I may be wrong and you can get it, but when I built an LX online last week you cannot get black wood as an option. In fact it seems like with black leather you are stuck with brown wood grain period which I find unacceptable on a 90k SUV.

Would I pay $1500 to have blackwood in this case, yes. Do you consider that paying extra for higher quality materials?..................

 

It costs $3,500 to have full dash-and-door leather on a M6. It's typically around $500 for alternative trim from a luxury marque.

We're talking roughly $500, maybe $1,000 MAX for better interior materials in mass-market vehicles. Perhaps even cheaper due to volume.

But then again, people don't buy mass market cars for their interior materials (the midsize or full size sedans pushing into luxury prices not included in this statement).

Really, there's no excuse for not having the OPTION of nicer stuff in a luxury car. Luxury is all about options in the first place.

 

Interesting thought. I remember, though, that Lincoln, some years ago, tried to market a 'Blackwood" pickup that had just that......standard blackwood trim all around the back. It was a sales disaster, and barely sold 1000 copies. Of course, however, that was a pickup....blackwood trim in a luxury car might do considerably better.

 

Just wanted to throw in the fact that all leather isn't created equal. Comparing the leather in an M6 to one in an Accord would likely end badly for the accord.

 

I can say with confidence, the Lincoln did not fail because of the interior black wood

 

This thread's concept is already in practice. The 300 SRT is available with an option called the Leather Interior Group. It upgrades the interior with more leather. It includes a stitched leather dashboard. The option retails for $2,500.

 

^^^'

So, should it be an option or should it be standard?

Are consumers really gonna fork up another $2500 on certain cars just to have leather surfaces?

I mean, $2500 can get you a pretty damn good couch at home...



Looking at a lot of the posts, people want better materials, but don't want to pay for it. And most automakers would love to provide better materials, but they also want to be priced competitively.

 

I think one of the things we already seem to have determined in this thread is that, in some cases, potential buyers would spend an extra $2500 not to have leather. The NuLuxe is one of the best reasons why.

 

Bingo!

 

I like the idea that it's an option. It's not as if the 300's interior is a horrible place without the extra leather surfaces.

I was considering the purchase of a 300C Luxury Series before I purchased my GS 350. The main difference between the 300C and the 300C Luxury Series is the interior material quality. Leather lines more of the interior, the seat's leather is of a higher quality, the interior wood trim is open pore, the floor mats are berber pile, the steering wheel rim is chrome lined, etc. I was prepared to pay the price difference.

Even on my Lexus GS 350, I purchased the Luxury Package rather than the F Sport Package due to an improved interior quality for roughly the same price as the "boy racer" appearance parts of the F Sport. Individuals on the 4GS forum have found it's much cheaper to add the F Sport exterior body parts than it is to add the Luxury Package interior trim pieces. Obviously, good interiors are not cheap to produce.

 

Don't forget though, that despite poor sales, Ford tried again with the Mark LT

 

The A3 has fake leather stock. When the CT debuted I got to check out the A3 which had a much harder vinyl compared to NuLuxe which does a much better job of being a synthetic leather.