I love the outie. Love everything about it except its cheesy lego car looking dashboard plastic crap. anyone know of a whole dash kit that can solve this cheesy look? it makes a high qualityvehicle look like a toy. yeah it may of been a way to keep the cost low, but i would like to know if the aftermarket has found this flaw and created something wonderful to solve this problem.

 

There's a company called Sherwood dash www.sherwooddash.com that sells a nice dashboard kit for the outtie, but even with the kitthe upper part of the dash is unchanged.

I use Meguiar's Natural shine on the dash and that helps some giving it a more dressed up look.
To me the only thing thats really cheesy looking are the small ***** for the radio in the non Navi version. If the ***** were bigger and maybe had some chrome on them that would help a lot. My other complaint is the black color shows up marks, fingerprints, etc more than a lighter color.

 

I guess it's a question of perception... An Infiniti driver was a passenger in my Outie on Friday night and remarked upon how upscale the Outlander looked and felt...

:-)

I have to admit, it's a challenge to keep it oil free, but I simply create a solution of water, very little meguiars car wash soap, and maybe a couple of ounces of regular armor-all. Wash and wipe... Very nice, low lustre finish, always looks new.

 

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder... My wife's CR-V dash is also made of plastic, and isn't all dash nowadays made of plastic? About the Lego look, it's actually a blessing in disguise. I don't think we will be doing a lot of mods to the MMCS, cooler fan attachment mods, etc if the dash were mono block. Have you guys figured how easy it is for us to access the dash inner workings? I say this lego block design is brilliant. We don't have to take apart the whole dash to work on a specific area. But that's just me and my 2cents worth...

 

Well the Outtie's dash is just hard. Most cars, especially ones over $20-25k have more of a softer dash and trim pieces. Yes its more expensive (and thats where Mitsu cut) but it does make the vehicle "feel" more luxurious/expensive.

 

lol i still think it looks cheesy.anyone with a model without leather notice any excessive wear on your seats? to me after only owning it for 2 months, ive noticed the seats in the outie appear that they will wear out faster then i want them to. anyone else experiencing that?

 

I've owned my ES 5 months and have not noticed any wear so far on the cloth seats. I vaccum them weekly and use a damp white wash cloth to gently wipe them down. The one thing I have noticed isthe start of awear spot on the carpeted floor mat on the driver's side where I rest my right heel when my foot is on the gas pedal. Some floor mats have a rubber piece sewn in at that spot to prevent this, but the outtie floor mats do not.

 

yeah i dont even let the oem floormats get a breath of daylight. once i noticed that they dont have the plastic protective covering, i bought some all weather mats to throw down so i dont care if they get beat up.

 

Oneidea I had was to take out the driver's floor mat and take itto a shoe repair place to have a rubber, or vinyl piece sewed where its wearing. I think a shoe repair place would work best since they have theheavy duty sewing machines for the shoes they repair. Being in Phoenix we don't get snow or for that matter a lot of rain so except for the wear spot carpeted floor mats hold up well.

 

Ahh nope.... had it for 1yr 6mo and drive it everyday. They are black leather, and no signs of wear. Infact, they pretty much still look new except for the corner where I get in and out by the door. My '99 Mercury Cougar started showing wear and cracks after 6mo. So compared I think that the Outlanders leather is stiffer, which makes them less comfortable (soft) but more durable. imo