Who could use some good news? I feel like we all could right about now. And this is the kind of good news that I feel many of us will see as something that has been a long time coming, a final breaking of an idiotic tyranny, one that nobody ever asked for or wanted, but we endured for years. I’m talking about a dark, sinister menace that has been stalking the automotive world for about a decade now. A greedy, cruel material that has taken the interiors of cars hostage for far too long. I’m talking about Piano Black, and I’m happy to say that it appears its reign of terror is finally ending.
Are you familiar with Piano Black? Fundamentally, it’s just a plastic. A very glossy, shiny plastic, I suppose named for the extremely glossy black laquerwork found on the grand pianos that you likely see multiple times a day.
You know, one of these:
Look, it even has three pedals, just like our favorite cars! I always forget that pianos have clutches.
I’m not really sure exactly who decided that that sort of deep-glossy look was what was needed for car interiors, but whoever it was must not have had fingers or maybe they lived in a hermetically-sealed chamber, free of all dust, tiny particles of dried skin, anything that can cause tiny scratches, or, really anything that exists in reality, because Piano Black and normal human reality simply do not mix.
Piano Black is a nightmare. It’s a nightmare because it’s an inherently unforgiving material, and when it comes to cars, I can’t really think of any worse qualities than unforgiveness, especially in an interior material.
And yet, somehow, it was showing up everywhere. Even the Mitsubishi Mirage had it!
Piano Black is terrible stuff. It’s not just me saying this; the global consensus seems to be that nobody likes Piano Black! While it may look great in brochure pictures and carefully-staged photo shoots, when it comes to it actually in a real car that gets driven, it gets covered in fingerprints, micro-scratches and macro-scratches, it gets cloudy and dull and just looks awful. And because car owners know what it’s supposed to look like, because they have a vision of the platonic ideal of Piano Black in their heads, the disparity between what they know it’s supposed to look like and how it actually looks is driving people nuts.
This material is so demanding of constant upkeep and maintenance, it becomes a miserable burden for people. And because it’s often all over dashboards and around controls that require actually touching, it’s always visible and always being smudged or scratched or whatever.
Look at all of these videos dedicated to the fruitless pursuit of trying to keep Piano Black interior panels looking like they hypothetically are supposed to:
There’s more, there’s so many more videos like this, because Piano Black is about as durable and scratch-resistant as an extremely thin slice of Nova Scotia salmon, but without the charm.
Your car’s interior should be able to take some use and abuse; it’s going to be touched and prodded and things will fall on it and things may be spilled and your fingernails will rake over it, and a good interior material should shrug all this off with the cool, cavalier aplomb of an astronaut drinking a cocktail. But not Piano Black; Piano Black is a fussy little purebred dog that vomits if you walk past it too fast, and its hair and teeth fall out if it drinks water that’s too tepid.
Fuck Piano Black.
Thankfully, carmakers seem to be finally realizing this, as Piano Black seems to be finally disappearing from new car dashboards. In fact, at least one major automaker seems to be addressing this directly: Kia. In fact, last year Kia’s head of design, Jochen Paesen, announced that they would be eliminating the high-gloss material in the upcoming EV9, and at this year’s LA Auto Show, which is currently happening, Kia’s reveal had much the same to say:
If you jump to 5:12, you can hear them say the center stack “swaps the previous high-gloss surfaces for a sophisticated texture,” which is a clear reference to Piano Black interior material. They also mention better resistance to fingerprints, another dig at the glossy garbage.
I can’t speak to why Piano Black had such a cruel and persistent grip on our car interiors for so long. I don’t understand how automakers could have seen how poorly the material ages from normal use and still decided to keep offering it. It feels like a willful disregard for how cars are actually, normally used.
But now, finally, I think the Piano Black empire is crumbling. That doesn’t help those of you still saddled with this miserable, uncooperative, cruel plastic, but at least we can hope that future generations will be free from keeping microfiber cloths in their car, fecklessly and uselessly wiping at fingerprints that are doomed to re-appear moments later.
See you in hell, Piano Black.
Piano photo via Yamaha
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Related: Fuck Alcantara on touchpoints. Headliner? Fine. Steering wheel? NOOOOO
Totally agree on touch points. My Camaro Zl1 has an Alcantara steering wheel and shifter, feels nice to drive and grippy. Also sucks, gets matted, you have exfoliate it to clean. A real PITA to keep clean. Not to mention knee pads, arm rests, door cars… thankfully it’s not my daily otherwise I’d have to clean it daily, no fun…
If you haven’t submitted it to member rides please do, we’d love to hear more about it. The ZL1 is a car that lives in my head rent free and I may wind up circling back to one in a few years if values don’t go nuts.
good call, thx I will submit something
My Boss 302 had the same damn problem. I will say I do love alcantara seats. Nice and grippy yet comfortable and look more upscale than cloth. Perfect for driving on track.
My 24 Ridgeline Black edition has been contaminated with this stupid stuff, it’s not too pervasive and on the dash it kinda stays out of the way… but… It is on the center console by the cup holders, shifter buttons and the drive mode button. I absolutely hate it there, will probably swap it for the base Ridgeline trim eventually which is silver ish. Annoying having to keep a microfiber towel in the center console for this silly stuff…
There’s a lot of things that I don’t like about people and one of them is that we’re gross and this piano black BS and touchscreens do nothing but highlight that grossness by displaying fingerprints. I hope the other manufacturers follow this lead.
This just made me think that some of the biggest complaints about the GR86/BRZ is the interior (instead of more valid complaints like the clutch feel or throttle calibration or that you can’t use the standard gauge display with the nannies off), but it’s comfortable (with a little modification to the seats), styled decently, has good ergonomics, has actual buttons and switches for pretty much anything you would use while driving, and there’s no damn piano black. Sure, the fit and the materials could be a little better quality, but it’s not like pieces are falling off and the damn thing cost under $30k OTD and weighs well under 3k lbs without having to have a carbon fiber tub or the interior space apparently designed to be just big enough to accommodate the 95th percentile male spider monkey.
Apparently I am in the minority in not caring too much. Is it ideal? I guess not. But, everyone complains about rubbermaid interiors and the price of vehicles. This is a cheap way to make it not rubbermaid. We can’t just use metal or wood or carbon. Technology is cheap but labor is not. Those require much more labor than injection molding. Maybe things will change with wide area 3d printing, basically bulk printing of parts. Check out the company Seurat for an example. It’s basically 3D printing meets multi-cavity injection molds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llAcqwD2TBY
I’d rather have Rubbermaid than cheap Chinese air fryer.
You nailed the proper name for “piano” black. A lot more syllables to get through though. Just call it CCAF (pronounced see-caff)?
Hindsight is 20/20.
I’m pretty sure the reason it lasted so long is because it was cheap. And it looked classy in studio pics.
At least fingerprints and scratches help cut down the GLARE !!!
Yeah, this is the worst part. Special place in hell for people who put shiny surfaces where they will reflect the sun into the driver’s eyes.
I hate those shiny surfaces!! I had a job test driving cars for a company working on battery swapping tech. Basically I was tasked with running down the batteries and having them swapped out over and over and over.
I found several car models had trim that would reflect the sun right back into my eyes. I got some of my blue Scotch painters tape and covered all the shiny areas.
Yeah I think it was in a previous generation Prius where I read about people having to cover up pieces of the trim to avoid being blinded by it.
I have a Chevy Bolt where you have to do that. It has a thin strip of chrome above the touch screen that catches the sun and blinds the driver. I put electrical tape over it, which is the most common mod. Others have used plasti-dip
Yes brother! I have a newer Leaf and this stupid stuff makes it the only car I know of that the passenger needs sunglasses to look down. At some point I may get some kind of translucent vinyl to fix this or just pop it out and paint it.
I’m disappointed that Kia came up in this article instead of Mazda.
Mazda really downgraded the 3rd gen 3 when they switched from fake textured carbon fiber to piano black. The older trim has a pleasant texture and never looks dirty or scratched.
That must be what we have in our CX-3. That interior is simply beautiful, not overdone, and has some nice burgundy accents.
Rest in piss you won’t be missed
https://youtu.be/OJOQYrXJF7o?si=KH60q0a3364ejLRe
I don’t know why someone doesn’t do textured surfaces that replicate some of the metal adornments often seen on cars of the ’50s. Not only do they look nice (IMO), would stand out against the other manufacturers’ terrible choices, but the texture makes it both more resistant to scratches and is better at hiding them, let alone fingerprints.
How about textured metal?
Even better, but I try to keep my expectations realistic.
Costs $0.25 more. Got to think of those executive compensation packages with profit targets.
But…
I love Piano Black!
It’s so shiny and smooth! It looks great, and it’s both classic and classy. I don’t understand all the hate.
GET OUT
I mean, I don’t love it, but neither do I hate it. It’s not as nice as some finishes, but a damn sight better than plenty of others.
Did nobody here live through Volkswagen’s “soft touch” era of the early 2000s? At least piano black doesn’t peel or get gummy.
The key to that was to buy a car that already had all the soft wear off.
I hate materials trying to pretend to be other materials, and piano black plastic is cosplaying for either glass or actual lacquered wood – not sure which is worse.
I only hope that they won’t replace it with something even worse, like that cursed fake rubber finish that was really popular a few years ago. The thing becomes a gummy nightmare shortly after the warranty expires.
On that note, I hope one day a trend starts where phones are built to REALLY survive on the real world. What’s the advantage of making a gorgeous S24 Ultra out of titanium if I’ll have to hide the material under a plastic/rubber case just so the screen wouldn’t shatter when I miss my pocket and it hits the ground (this is how three separated phones of mine died, until I relented and started to use cases on my new phones).
I’ve never understood why Apple, Samsung et all refuse to notice how many people put rubberized cases on their phones but won’t offer a “base” level phone that’s clad in grippy rubber. And it’s not like many people keep their phones for more than a few years anyway, so any material degradation is a non-issue.
Years back, I had a Motorola that came with a rubber finish back and I loved it. Never cracked the screen b/c it was so easy to hold onto, it would stay in my pockets, etc.
Selling phone cases is big business. That should be all the explanation you need
My point isn’t even to do away with cases, but to integrate them into the phone. Sort like a removable shells we had in the past.
Desig a “naked” device that integrates the “cover” as part of the body, this way the end result will be less bulky and more customizable.
I think Rad’s point is that they can do a “sale” on a phone, then sell a case at an absurd profit. and I know too many people who go into the phone store and get a “free” phone or half off and still end up $500-$1000 out the door in crap they don’t need/could have bought online for 1/3 the price.
Yeah, I got that. Still, I would prefer the phone to be honest about it and require a case by design, including it on the aesthetic – since we’re buying the thing anyway.
The BlackBerry KeyOne had a grippy rubber back, but by the time it came out, nobody cared about them
Except me. I still miss my Blackberry and would do anything for that firm to be viable again. For professional communication, there was nothing better; that physical keyboard was everything.
Me too, actually, I never even owned a BlackBerry until the KeyOne came out, had several iPhones before that, but wondered if I would be able to type faster and more accurately with keys instead of a touchscreen, and it turned out, yes, yes I could. So, I had a KeyOne and a Key2, and then BlackBerry died and I had to go to back to just touchscreens. I’d have a Key3 or Key4 right now if it was an option.
Unihertz makes a compelling option, but I’ve heard things about CCP-mandated spyware that scares me away from them, unless someone knows anything different
CCP mandated Spyware, as opposed to Apple or Google Spyware that does exactly the same stuff
Where the information goes is important
What exactly do you think the CCP is going to do with whatever might come off your phone? Blackmail? Scam target? Brainwashing? One way tickets to slave camp?
I don’t want a hostile foreign government to be collecting electronic records on me, it’s bad enough our own government does it.
One concern is that all phones sold within China have mandated software which is often installed (but deactivated) on Chinese brand phones sold for export. It gives the government the ability to remotely turn off SMS messaging, and block phone calls to or from certain numbers or classes of numbers, as well as shut off payment apps or close bank accounts linked to the phone.
Oh the anonymity!
As long as we’re in a proxy war with one of China’s client status, we should be at least someone careful about giving them a possible backdoor to disrupt our national communications and banking systems, and play it off as some sort of accidental glitch. If the functionality is there, it stands to reason its there for more than just slowing down processing speed
If THAT’s your concern youve got a lot more to worry about than just China. China a few spots from the top on a long list of bad actors.
Yeah, I’d love a Blackberry or Palm physical keyboard back for my work phone.
I agree that it’s a nice material to handle. But it has a horrible lack of durability. A few years down the road, every kitchen tool, electric toothbrush, or or phone case with a soft touch outer surface molded on turns into a gummy messy that makes you have to toss it because you can’t handle it, even if the object itself is still otherwise useful. I hate to think what plasticizers are being released onto your fingertips as the surface decays into a tarry snot.
I’d settle for molded ridges or grooves even, just something to provide some grip either in hand or pocket. The whole futuristic sleek glass case looks good in ads, but really falls short in real world operability.
I like my ancient LG V20. It’s certified as US Military Standard (MIL STD-810G). It survived being thrown off my bike when the phone mount broke as I hit a nasty bump. The phone hit the pavement on its corner and as I watched it drop I was convinced the screen was about to shatter; however, when I picked it up only the plastic corner trim piece was deformed and a tiny off-screen crack had formed in the glass near the camera.
Turned out the plastic trim was cheap and easily replaceable. With a new $3 trim piece from eBay the phone looked almost like new. The crack never grew nor has it caused any issues. I did put it in a cheap rubber case and subsequent drops even onto concrete have resulted in no further damage.
Yes it is an old phone but it was LGs flagship at the time so it’s still good enough for me today. Its battery is even swappable which is why I haven’t bought a newer phone. OEM and good aftermarket replacements are cheap and readily available which counts for a lot in my book. It’s great to go from 0-100% charge in just a few seconds even miles from the nearest charger. Its also got an IR blaster, a 3.5mm jack and a B&O tuned quad channel 32 bit DAC and a 2TB capable SD card slot so with that card there’s plenty of room for your entire CD collection even ripped in WAV format.
Did I mention these go for between $40-$100 depending on model?
My only real complaint is LG no longer supports it so it’s officially stuck at Android 8.0. It’s possible to modernize that with LineageOS but I have no need to do so. The apps I care about still work. For now.
LineageOS kept my Samsung S8+ alive for far longer than it should. It is useful for when apps aren’t compatible with the old OS anymore.
All hail LineageOS!
It’s time for the finish whose time has come: live moss.
Oof what a terrible sentence, I now realize.
Anywho that comment inspired by a fancy house I recently saw in the Guardian. About $5 million for a Yorkshire mansion and one room was redecorated with a live moss wall. Indoors.
Seems unwise especially in Yorkshire. Just asking for black mold.
Cherry-Burton-Hall-223-e1722013726570.jpg
Ah, so we are swapping piano black for Vintage piano black, since it becomes textured with age.
I hate the black. My mom has a grand piano from the 60s- we thought it was black, until a gift (in lieu of a new car) was a 25k restoration. Pianos arent black- its a gorgeous dark stained wood, with woodgrain that shows when the sun hits it. That would be okay.
And why did it get such an expensive restoration? because my dad found out that a new equivalent would have cost more than a new corvette.
Same with clarinets. They look so good when you can just about see the woodgrain.
Come to think of it, maybe automotive designers just missed the mark. First there was the clearly fake wood trim, and then they overshot with the jet black stuff. The perfect thing might be in the middle.
Matte black plastic all the plastic things. I don’t need soft touch anything besides the seats.
My Focus has a gigantic expanse of hard plastic for the dash top (or whatever it’s called). I love it. I almost never actually touch it (who is constantly touching this area anyway that its so important?!) so it doesn’t bother me what it feels like, and it’s super easy to keep clean, just wipe it off.
Preach! My F-150 has 1 acre (approx .75 football fields) of plastic atop and as the dash. My fucks-over-time are basically an asymptote approaching zero – a windex wipedown (the windshield does get dirty with all the breathing and humidity and such) doesn’t bother it any more or less than a sensual armor-all massage or a hasty wipe from my 120-grit hands, or most realistically, nothing at all. Vinyl gator-skin in my rental-spec truck? bring it on. It’s a genuine luxury not to care.
I don’t want my car to look like or feel like the cheapest trash can on Amazon. Matte black plastic is horrid.
Why is piano black plastic better in your opinion?
It feels less cheap to me. But I assume the real answer is that piano black is generally used as an accent material whereas the trash can plastic is used extensively across interiors.
I suspect I would also hate piano black if full door cards or dashboards were made of it but I have yet to see that.
To each their own I suppose…
Howabout matte 50% gray? Is there a Vantagray?
Actually though I’ve long wanted a car painted with the dark gray/black satin used on the NeXT Cube. I have the Sherwin Williams industrial product codes for the paint, I think. If it’s even available or legal to sell due to volatile components.
Grey… Ew.
I luhhuhuhove the aluminum trim in the Z4. I love how cold it gets, how solid it feels, how it doesn’t reflect a damn thing or ever show a fingerprint unless I’ve got enough grease or oil to leave one on anything anyway.
Lower end appreciation – my Focus has aluminum colored plastic inserts, and once I got past the yeah it’s fake part, I was down with it. No fingerprints ever, I have zero worries I’m going to hurt it, and it looks fine for what it is.
Haha I think we were having the same sentiments towards each other at the same time in different responses
Right? 🙂
I always wonder: when exactly did people stop seeing vehicles as machines for doing something, and start seeing them as these objects to be sorta theoretically appreciated?
And worst case scenario, it gets scratched enough to bother you, pop it out and hit it with some aluminum rattle can paint.
BMW knows how to make a damn interior, that’s for sure
Caveat buffor: not all “microfiber” clothes are created equal. Ask me how I learned this on my first OLED TV.
One time in college, for our dress rehearsal for one of the choral groups, when we got to the hall (not our usual rehearsal space), the Steinway & Sons grand piano on the stage still had its protective cover on it, so we removed it haphazardly.
Later, we got yelled at by the guy who was…I guess, basically the superintendent for all music equipment in the university? He showed us how to fold the cover carefully so that it is not exposed to any dirt or whatever.
He explained that the last time they got that piano buffed cost them ten thousand dollars.
…that is to say, fuck Piano Black, and also I hope a digital piano that is affordable and scientifically aurally indiscernible from analog ones comes out sooner or later.
One time at college(drama school) I managed to drop a Steinway & Sons grand piano from the second story loading dock of a theatre. The sound it made was magnificent, there was a stunned silence and, for the only time in my life I received a round of rapturous applause. In Basingstoke.
There didn’t happen to be a cartoon cat underneath it at the time, did there?
Sadly not, although I suspect that the eyes on stalks thing might have happened at a number of insurance companies.
That’s awful but at the same time amazing. I wish I could hear that sound.
Ten thousand dollars?!? Dang… that’s the same as how much it cost to detail the Lancia Stratos HF Zero for the Petersen Museum: https://youtu.be/PRHT1KcFQ-A?si=EIv1QxfcA4Ccj34x
Yeah, it’s like…on one hand, I have no clue how long that takes, and clearly that’s a specialized talent–I’m sure if you had someone who just generally refinished wood do it the “typical” way it would affect the acoustics or something. Getting those pianos professionally tuned ain’t cheap either…
But it certainly doesn’t help anyone’s conflicted feelings about universities (relating to their costs). And I’m definitely way down the list of people who would argue against funding the arts, especially music.
Followed this process years ago. A semi-retired expert rented some work space and used our break room, so we chatted often. Done properly, it took months, because he was applying his secret shellac mix approx. eleven thousand times, letting the layers dry up for days, then buffing it up, then repeat. And treating the disassembled bits individually one at a time.
Not sure how it affects the acoustics.
Everybody’s throwing out their black plastic utensils over toxic chemical concerns, so I wonder what’s in the piano black stuff?
Frozen Liquid Death.
Figuring out a way to sell hard, shiny, monochrome plastic as a “premium” material is marketing wizardry on the scale of turning brown industrial-grade diamonds into jewelry by calling them “chocolate”
Just wait till we tell you about the history of Lobster….
My grandfather used to like to scoff at lobster and say, “that’s what the prisoners eat.” He was born in 1913, but I’m pretty sure that still predated his time. (He would eat it anyway.)
There’s a difference between discovering that something poor people eat tastes good, and taking something that’s always been considered cheap and undesirable and inventing a fancy-sounding new name for it and giving it a slick marketing campaign. Hell, caviar started out that way, too, as did pretty much everything on the menu in a typical Sicilian restaurant.
Hard, smooth plastic used to get derided in automotive reviews as being “Fisher Price” grade until automakers branded it “Piano Black”, it wasn’t any inherent “goodness” that made people suddenly realize they liked it, it was the name and the marketing that did that.
Same with what is now called “alcantara”. It’s just sueded polyester. It’s cheap crappy plastic covering.
Except thats not what Alcantara is.
Alcantara is an extruded, non-woven fiber that is tangled together with micro-hooked needles into a durable material – similar to Ultrasuede, and invented by the same Japanese engineer – but with higher-grade wear and flame-proof properties specifically engineered for automotive use.
Sueded polyester is a woven material that’s brushed – pulling at the fibers and deteriorating the threads in the process, similar to how flannel is made from a woven cotton twill.
I…. guess? it’s still a 70% ish polyester.blend fabric.
I don’t see that we’re disagreeing about anything.
It’s like saying that Tortellini and Ravioli are the same things.
Or a Dodge Hemi and a Bentley 6.75L are interchangeable.
Sure, they’re both filled pastas and V8 engines – But….
“Or a Dodge Hemi and a Bentley 6.75L are interchangeable.”
Maybe these guys will swap Hemis on request:
https://hotrodparts.com/rollsbentleyparts/engine_conversion.htm
Funny thing is it’s seldom that the engines and transmissions themselves go wrong.
It’s the electronics and suspensions.
The 6.25-6.75 V8, and the inline 6 that came before are fairly bulletproof.
To this, I give you “Patagonian Toothfish,” which the marketing folks have dubbed a Chilean Sea Bass to rave reviews.
…not to say it isn’t tasty, though.
That’s right on, and it would still be just as tasty regardless, obviously, but the name change made it “premium”. Similarly, some brown diamonds were always used for jewelry, because some people just always found them attractive, but most people didn’t, so most were used for industrial purposes until clever branding was devised
Another in the long line of ersatz luxury finishes gone. That they’re all just plastic at heart is what makes them so annoying in my book.
The worst had to be the “chrome” wheels on my father’s Explorer that turned out to be basically plastic wheel covers bonded to perfectly good alloy wheels. This travesty was considered up-level even.
Thank you Sweet Baby Jesus.
I see a red car
And I no longer want it painted Piano Black…
The only way to properly deal with piano black is to wrap it
That’s the only good thing about it—it’s a nice smooth surface to cover with something else.
Thank the Lord.
Unfortunately I’m sure it will take Stellantis 3 years to get wind of this, and they’ll probably return us to painted silver plastic.
But man, Piano black sucks so bad when dealing in new cars. Customers test driving them dragging their purses across the trim panels, lot porters forgetting to clean dust off new vehicle deliveries, and oh my GOSH the all the fingerprints we have to clean every day.
Bring back the original carbon fiber: Wood
This. If there is the option I always spec interior wood trim.
Correct takes, both of these
Whoa, real wood is an option in this day and age? Rolls or what?
Most Volvos have real wood. Gloss on lower trims and open pore on top specs. Beautiful stuff. Unfortunately they also contain a lot of piano black.
My most recent choice was in a W206 Mercedes-Benz bought in December 2023.