Turning back to hide

Look around your car’s cabin and try to identify the materials and the way they’ve been put together. Do you actually know what any of this stuff is or even how it’s been assembled? A former editor of mine used to call the unidentifiable material in modern car interiors ‘snibbo’: miracle stuff to cover up the not-so miraculous.

Most of it is plastics of varying stripe, but increasingly that plastic will be in its second life, recycled from PET bottles for instance, or other bits of car in an ever-downward-use spiral where eventually everything ends up lining the wheel arches or the boot floor. But what about the soft fabrics, the door cards, the dash top and those bits of soft-touch loveliness in the places no one with an ounce of sense would ever touch?

Would you know the differences between the old and new materials of: Rexine; Kvadrat; Naugahyde; Armacord; Leatherette; Vinyl; Alcantara; Hardura; Vynide; Tuffelt; and good old-fashioned wood, chromium plate, leather and wool? If you don’t, try ace-trimming company John Skinner’s excellent website.