The editorial staff here has been criticized by some of you, our gentle readers, for not treating the cars in our long-term fleet with the proper amount of care. The implication is that our editors are masters of disaster, cutting wide swaths of damage and destruction fueled by negligence, carelessness and just plain stupidity as we drag our knuckles from one hapless car to the next. And hey, maybe there's some truth to that.
Which is why it's so surprising that our Hyundai Sonata's beige seats are still spotless after seven months and over 13,000 miles. Pristine. Unblemished. And did I mention that they're beige? We had a Hyundai Azera with beige seats a few years back and it didn't take long for them to take the shame-walk from unsullied to soiled. I blame denim jeans, which, I suspect, somehow bled into the seat fabric.
Anyway, we're still wearing denims but this fact hasn't defiled our Sonata's pure beige butt-cradlers - not yet, anyway. Perhaps Hyundai has learned a thing or two about seat fabrics since our time with the Azera.
What kind of luck have you had with your car's seat fabric?
Warren Clarke, Automotive Content Editor @ 13,197 miles
ocramidajzj says:
05:20 PM, 01/31/11
Impressive...or someone decided to actually clean the seat before they posted for fear of scathing blog responses. :-)
felonious_monk says:
05:33 PM, 01/31/11
I'm usually the last one to comment on the staff's shortcomings, even going so far as to come to the general defense once or twice, but the picture of the trail of coffee/Coke/tobacco juice drippings on the Bimmer's floormats has irreparably snatched away some of the slack with which I used to cut.
Anyway, looks to me like Hyundai got wind of your slobby shenanigans and coated those seats with some sort of new-fangled Teflon-like product. Now, show us the floormats.
cr_driver says:
06:05 PM, 01/31/11
Good looking!
Now, show us the floormats.
bodyblue says:
06:11 PM, 01/31/11
I keep waiting for somebody to accuse Hyundai of copying some other car maker by treating their seats....how dare they!
Those are really nice looking seats.....at ANY price point.
mikeolan says:
06:25 PM, 01/31/11
The answer is right there in the picture. They're "YES ESSENTIALS" seats (see the tag) , so they're supposed to be grime-resistant.
crzelite says:
07:49 PM, 01/31/11
My 2003 Mazda6s (RIP) had great seat fabric. I sold it with 84000 miles on it when I bought my C55 and its seats were spotless.
clarkma5 says:
08:14 PM, 01/31/11
65,000 miles and 7 years on my GTI's BLACK cloth interior...vacuumed every wash and I've gone after it a couple times with 303 Fabric Cleaner and a bucket of warm soapy water for some touch-up work but they still look new.
A no eating-or-drinking rule in my car certainly helps (though there have been a few exceptions made over the years...no spills, though! *knocks on wood*)
firstwagon says:
08:24 PM, 01/31/11
I had a beige interior on my 91 legacy and it looked fine after 19 years... and I ate in the car, drank in the car, wore jeans in the car, even took it camping and to the drive-in theatre many times.
It's not that hard to keep stuff clean.
super_ongoy says:
11:40 PM, 01/31/11
I never heard of jeans bleeding into car seats. I suspect that one of the editors took the car out one night wearing jeans, got hammered and later passed out in the car with a swamp ass. I can't think of any other way jeans would bleed.
jaeger1 says:
06:54 AM, 02/ 1/11
I'm not fond of the look or feel of the Sonata cloth fabric, but it's good to know that it wears well.
Jaeger
typesdriver says:
07:12 AM, 02/ 1/11
Those seats do look quite nice, and I'm happy to hear that the fabric is wearing well.
One question, though, for any new Sonata owner:
With the fabric seats, do you get shocked by the door every time you get out of the car? I have a 2008 Sonata SE with cloth seats, and every single time I get out of the car I shock the hell out of myself. It's much worse in the winter, but it's a year round problem that drives me nuts. I actually love my Sonata and I haven't had any problems with it at all, but getting out of the car is a shocking experience!
85se says:
08:00 AM, 02/ 1/11
Around here the bodies wear out long before the cloth can.
Only seat trouble I've had was fabric dry rot in a 25 year old car that was winter stored. Hardly blame that one on the original designers. That car had a tan interior - it wasn't hard to keep clean, but then again, it was just a toy.
ed124c says:
10:20 AM, 02/ 1/11
I always buy cars with tan or beige seats, and they never wear out and they never get to the point where a little elbow grease can't make them look like new.
If you like black, buy it. But, do you really think your black seats are clean if you can't see the black dirt that you're sitting on?
litewerk says:
06:43 PM, 02/ 2/11
I'll say that I'm diggin' those seats. I prefer tan or beige seats to charcoal/black. Reason being that I've owned more black interior cars. And, that it's hard to find an interior in an affordable car that isn't some shade of gray or black.
From experience, I've found that black cloth seats show every speck of lint and dust. Such as almost immediately after cleaning them. Your results may vary.