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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Thank God!! I remember my Stinger was covered in that crap and it ruined what would have been a fantastic car. My wife’s new Colorado ZR2 has some of it but not much thankfully.
Didn’t happen soon enough for me. I am burdened with 2 cars with it on the center console. First car is my work car so as soon as I drove off the lot, was basically screwed. Second is my wife’s car which hauls a kid around so that’s inevitably screwed like yesterday.
Does anyone do a credible wrap on the stuff?
Just drove my mom’s new Kia Niro across the US. There’s so much piano black trim, and it’s in bad bad places. Both my right and left knees were up against piano black, as Kia decided to put a big swath in the door card and the entire center console is a sheet of the shiny crap. It looked absolutely filthy and it did pick up a scratch or two already. And if it wasn’t shiny black, it was that rubberized matte black plastic which loves to absorb skin oils and show prints.
I definitely want to put diecut vinyl overlays on to protect the trim.
Hopefully Porsche gets the memo. Looked at a Macan (a relatively low-mid spec S) several years back, and couldn’t get over how cheap the interior looked for what was I think 80k-ish. Piano black for days. Drove great, sounded great, but reminded you of Porsche’s famous gross margins every time you sat down. Got an XC90 instead. It’s a boat, but doesn’t make me feel like a sucker.
Piano black to be replaced by Tuba Gold.
I am confused. If so many cars have piano black and sales are so good I don’t think Americans are screaming to get rid of it. Yeah it sucks. However in age where car buyers have 27 different choices in paint colors and they are all black, grey, and white I must argue that claiming cheap black plastic as an issue is similar to comparing the fact that M&M’s have or don’t have purple M&M’s.
For as many shades of white and black populate cars nowadays, I don’t feel like interiors generally have as much of an option. Yes the seats and dash probably have 2 or 3 colors to choose from generally, but the center console and radio (or screen more so now) surrounds I don’t think usually change. My Mazda3 had 3 interior colors to choose from if I remember correctly but they all had the same piano black surround for the shifter.
So when you don’t have a choice to get piano black or not on any color combo, I don’t think somebody is going to say now to the car just for that small bit. Or they don’t go into the purchase realizing just how much upkeep that small (sometimes) trim piece will take and just how bad it will look after a week of living with the car.
This is kind of like that alcantara-like upholstery that bmw and other oems would put on cars that were almost daily driven, had to tell a customer that they needed to pay for the new steering wheel they wanted warrantied because of the excessive amounts of lotion they used made their wheel look like a well worn device one would find in Puff Diddies house.
I’ve got alcantara wheels in both my cars so I clean them every 6,000 miles or so.
My mother-in-law has one in her Juke Nismo RS and had never cleaned it. It looked like mouldy leather, it was awful.
Crime Scene Investigators across the globe are mourning.
Pianos are expensive, and Frasier Crane had one in his apartment, therefore something called “piano black” must be sophisticated, and the driver of a car with such a feature, more than likely, plays chess while wearing a tuxedo, listening to classical music. They were selling a lifestyle.
May I point out tuxedo tshirts are the same color as tuxedos. It is a budget issue.
Great reference pulling Frazier out of the 90’s
GMT 800 trucks everywhere like this article
Know two people who took action. One, of a wood working bent, hand made a sort of vernier and stuck it on, good traditional walnut burr. Ok it was a bit thick and looked hand made but better than the plastic.
The other just painted it orange, because she is like that….
The irony of piano black on pianos is it’s never touched unless the damn thing is being moved (most likely with people wearing gloves).
I guess automakers didn’t get the distinction.
Bring back wood!!!!
Piano black dash panels are the current equivalent of fake wood dash panels in the 70s. Trying for classy, missing the mark, and likely to be ridiculed ten years later.
That’s what she said.
Kramer: Well, I’m staining my floors and, y’know, I don’t want to get my
hands dirty…
George: What, the whole apartment?
Kramer: The whole apartment. And I’m buying that fake wood wallpaper. I’m
gonna surround myself in wood. It’s gonna be like a log cabin.
‘Cuz I *need* wood around me. Wood, Jerry [Snaps fingers]… Wood.
I feel the same way about body colored bumpers. We’re never going back, but ‘member back in the day when bumpers could be BUMPED and not require thousands of dollars in repairs? I backed into a bollard hard in my XJ, hard enough that I couldn’t open the hatch. A 2×4 and a mallet made quick work of the deformation without scratching it, and then you couldn’t even tell.
Those were all ugly and I’m glad we’ve moved away from them.
Bumpers shouldn’t be bumped, it’s not hard to not hit other peoples’ cars and everyone should be more careful.
You are going to hate driving in France.
But I agree. Bumping into another car is so easy to avoid that it deserves consequences.
I happen to be French, the general disregard for others’ cars is a cultural aspect of my home country that I detest.
I’m English, so I detest pretty much every cultural aspect of my home country.
And the French?
I assume they also detest every cultural aspect of England.
Pre-Brexit I used to dream of retiring to France.
Well yeah, all the distracted idiots on their phones should pay attention, but that’s where the name comes from; they’re called bumpers so in case they get bumped it’s no big deal- that’s it’s job
Does anyone else want a bagel and lox after reading this?
The real reason piano black plastic trim was/is chosen is cost. The molded parts do no need any secondary paint to achieve the lustrous appearance.
Piano black car interiors are akin to being a dog owner and having white carpeting throughout your entire house! Makes no sense!
My wife’s 2021 Mazda3 had bunch of piano black surfaces on the dash. One thing they don’t tell you about this surface is that you can scratch the everliving shit out of it just for being foolish enough to try to give it a quick wipe down with a microfibre cloth and water. It became a huge issue when we went to sell it – since the car was practically new but the scratches on the centre console aged it so badly. I was also really nervous about using any polishing compound lest the bloody surface just dissolve underneath it. I think I ended up using a very mild paint correction compound which got out all but the deepest scratches. How the duck that material was ever signed off to be used in a car I’ll never understand. And also – couldn’t they at least have put a clear coat on it that was a bit harder than the melted butter they obviously elected to use?
Same on mine. I wished I hadn’t taken off the pre-delivery clear plastic wrap.
Fuck! It may be dying but it didn’t die soon enough for me to take delivery of my last car 3 months ago!
Dreadful material, it looks gaudy when it’s new, and rooted within a few weeks of using the car.
This must have been how people felt when cars started transitioning away from plastic fake wood grain. Maybe piano black will be a hallmark of this era of cars in the same way phony wood grain was to 70s-80s American cars.
Speaking of wood grain, what was the last domestic vehicle to have wood grain as standard feature?
Off the top of my head I think it might be a tie. Both 1991 years Wagoneer and Chrysler Town and Country mimivan
Inside or outside? My ’97 Grand Cherokee has ‘burl wood’ trim. It appears to be some kind of printing on plastic, but it became sticky to the touch somewhere around year 15. Cleaning it with Armor All gets rid of the stickiness without harming the appearance.
“Wood Grain” is a generic term for the fake wood panels applied to the sides on the outside. Wasn’t aware that this term could apply to the interior trim.
Now if only manufacturers would stop the hell using gloss black all over exterior trim. Jesus! ( I’m looking at you Crown Signia)
Agreed, unless it’s painted, that’s a terrible idea. Exterior window trim on a lot of cars seems to have trouble if it’s at all glossy.
And RAV4 Prime, and a number of BMWs. It looks terrible from Day 1.
Of course the Crown itself is burdened by that strip of black trim on the doors….for some reason. Makes it hard to consider the car in any color but black to hide that thing.
What is the alternative? Matte black looks cheap and any brightwork is gaudy.
Piano black was cheap she easy to produce and install, and for the first 30 mins after leaving the showroom, it’s an effective way to fake classiness.
Good riddance. I swear, Piano Black was the only finish better at showing smudges, scratches, and fingerprints than rubberized plastic.
Elon M would like to show you his new truck
Best thing I have done to my 128i convertible was change the awful piano black trim to poplar wood trim. So much nicer, really complements the Savanah Biege interior.
https://flic.kr/p/2k8HC8J
As a bonus, some wierdo paid me more for my piano black trim than I paid for the poplar – go figure. But I suppose perfect condition piano black is rather rare.
Beautiful!
Good score! Even though I think wood looks outdated in modern cars, against piano black (or its predecessor of early ’90s Walmart brand stereo silver), there’s no contest.
Wood and leather is a timeless look. <shrug>