See that terrifying beast up there? It’s an exotic animal, one you’re unlikely to have encountered in the wild, but one that I’m almost certain you know the feel of. Well, of its skin, at least, when not wrapping whatever organs pulse and ooze and secrete inside the body of this animal – which I don’t think is a mammal, as it has neither hair nor nipples, and believe me, I’ve checked – but rather when used as upholstery for such things as furniture and, yes, car seats.
That animal is a nauga, and the when its hide is used for upholstery purposes, we call it naugahide.
Well, sometimes carmakers have given it different names; back in the 1950s, GM called it cordaveen when used on Buicks, as you can see here:
I think the name was supposed to be confused with or at least allude to cordovan leather, which is used in high-end shoemaking, kind of like how my now-banned line of synthetic clam meat was called Kleamn™ before those liars at the FDA got all up in my shit about my secret family process for making synthetic clams, which they found “dangerous” and “unfit for consumption” and a bunch of other meaningless buzzwords.
I’m sorry, but if anyone thinks those assholes at the FDA would be so much better at keeping “chunks of rubber, epoxy-based resins, and various tree saps,” (if you believe their bullshit reports) out of their synthetic clams, then feel free to buy their synthetic clam meat, which, I’d like to remind you, does not exist.
Sorry, I’m getting off-topic. Back to naugahide! GM also called the stuff other names, like Morrokide in Pontiacs:
Naugahide was developed and first marketed under the name back in 1936, and the name seems like it could have been from Naugatuck, Connecticut, which would be a pretty amazing coincidence seeing as how the animal the hide comes from is called the nauga as well. What are the odds?
Okay, fine. Maybe the nauga isn’t a real animal. Maybe Uniroyal makes the PVC-based naugahide fake leather, and maybe back in the 1960s Uniroyal hired ad man George Lois and designer Kurt Weihs to come up with a way to make synthetic leather more fun and interesting to people, and they came up with the concept of the nauga, the beast from which naugahide is harvested.
I suppose after you make an endearingly ugly-cute beast like the nauga, you’re not really going to want to base your whole ad campaign about how you capture them, slaughter them wholesale, and peel off their skins, so the lore of the nauga is that they willingly and painlessly molt their skins once a year. Then Uniroyal operatives collect and harvest the hides, which are then processed into the hard-wearing naugahide most of us have fallen asleep upon and soaked in copious amounts of drool, which, thanks to the non-porous nature of the material, likely just pooled on the surface.
In addition to the use of naugahide on furniture, Uniroyal also made actual dolls of the nauga, which were, of course, all naugahide.
I remember there was one of these in a beach house my parents rented when I was a kid, probably sometime in the 1970s? I remember being pretty fascinated by it, not just because of its bonkers looks, but also because it felt and smelled and tasted just like the seats in our 1973 Ford Country Squire.
It’s kind of amazing just how much marketing was undertaken for fake leather. A huge nauga suit – probably multiple ones – was made, and some dude put it on and went on talk shows like The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, as you can see up there. I believe that the woman in that picture was romantically linked to the nauga for a while at least, and they had a child that provided at least some of the genetic material used to make one of the later clones of noted actor Danny DiVito.
Carson became a spokesperson for Naugahide, which, if you think about it objectively, is bonkers. Imagine a celebrity of an equivalent status to Johnny Carson today shilling for some artificial upholstery today. Can you picture a Jimmy Kimmel or Kelly Ripa or Nathan Lane or whomever doing ads for Alcantara or Clarino or Fabrikoid?
More importantly, I think there’s an opportunity here thanks to the nauga. Since it’s already established that nauga skin is used for many industrial and consumer uses, the companies working on synthetic vat-grown meats should leverage this already-established icon and cast it as the source for naugasteaks or nauganuggets or naugaliver or whatever they’re making!
Just, you know, watch out for the FDA. Those fuckers have no chill.
I would just like to remind everybody that we are dangerously close to wiping out the last alcantara forest. Haven’t we learned anything from hunting the velour birds to extinction?
I have a 68 Kustom 100 bass amp with a turquoise rolled and pleated Naugahyde cabinet. I always wanted a car interior with the same look.
Wait, the FDA still exists?
No surprise about Johnny to me. The Big Three were still supreme back then, especially GM. If their bean counters and designers both got on the same page they could probably move mountains. I believe the appeal of inexpensively manufactured stain resistant upholstery combined with an array of available colors which could be cut and sewn more easily was virtually irresistible to them. Furthermore, those early plastics were sometimes of astonishingly high quality and would stay soft for ages. There’s plenty of early naugahyde furniture out there in perfect condition.
My chair is upholstered in real Naugahyde
When they killed that nauga, I sat down and cried…
~Alan Sherman
Still available for sale, made in the heartland of the U. S. of A.
https://www.naugahyde.com/dolls/
Or… maybe not. That’s a whole lot of OUT OF STOCK notices…
Morrokide memories of my first car, a 1969 Pontiac Le Mans 2 door hardtop coupe with all black bucket seat interior. Purchased at age 17 for $300 in 1981, with mini moon disc hubcaps. The body was very rusty from Ohio winters but the Morrokide interior was mint!, just needed a good scrubbing because the previous owner smoked. GM’s legendary FrigidAire air conditioning still working to keep that interior icy cold, cause Morrokide was a hot sticky mess in the summer without ac.
Wondering how many mysterious small odd shaped burn scars are on a generation of peoples backs about halfway up from those various shaped metal medallions placed about 3/4 ways up on the seat backs as a luxury design feature in cars of 50’s, 60’s, and into the 70’s. Forgetting about those on a day when the sun shone directly on them and sitting shirtless brought a swift reminder you forgot about them and usually a few choice curse words.
As the prior owner of various owner of various 70’s and 80’s diesel Mercedes autos, I have to wonder what the MB Tex monster looks like, because its hide wears like an anvil.
I thought those indestructible Mercedes seats were made from the tanned hides of Krampus. The stuffing wasnt horsehair but his fur
I didn’t know Naugas did kids parties. I’ll keep that in mind.
This looks like your new spokesmodel for tariffs. If it were introduced today it would be the hero of a video game.
Much more humane than however many Corinthians were flayed to upholster Chryslers.
I thought it was just 1 Corinthians or 2 Corinthians?
And Iacocca spake. If there be 50 righteous Naugas in the city of Cordoba I will spare the Corinthians for their sake. And Abraham spoke up again. How about 45?
They were in extremely short supply even before the harvest began. Only the most pampered, least sunburnt hides could be used.
Why else would it be called Rich-Corinthian leather?
And Paul said to the Corinthians “for none shall be closer to God than those whose skin is sacrificed for my Chrysler Cordoba.”
The reason it isn’t used today is that nobody knows where the naugahide.
*sips coffee.
All of the Nauga-sighting videos i could find online are so poorly shot and too grainy to make out. Starting to think it’s a hoax.
I’ve seen a couple of those little stuffed Nauga dolls in antique/vintage stores recently, and they go for big bucks—I think one of them was asking $600!
And then, in the 80s, GM switched from the naugas to sacrificing thousands and thousands of poor little gray mice to use their fur for interiors. I’m not sure that’s better.
My first car was a 1984 Celebrity Wagon fully upholstered in mouse-fur gray.
It wasn’t beautiful and certainly wasn’t (euro)sporty but with some chunky snow tires on that car would go anywhere and I have been hooked on wagons ever since.
Thankfully, mice procreate much more quickly than the Nauga
If you sprang for something more expensive like a Cutlass Supreme or Electra, the seats came from the “velour” farm. The poor little velveteen rabbit was slaughtered by the millions during the 70s/80s.
GM kept this dirty little industrial secret under wraps for years by placing the fur farms for the velveteen rabbit in the abandoned salt mines under Lake Erie. Which GM also owned to make their cars rust faster so you would buy a new one.
The primary defense mechanism for the wild velveteen rabbit was to static shock its predators. Inevitably there was a HUGE fire at the underground velveteen fur farm in 1991. It was horrid, a couple ice fishermen on lake Erie that day swore they heard the faint but shrill screams of the millions of velveteen rabbits that perished. GM of course kept this under tight wraps, but its the reason why velour seats went out of fashion almost overnight
There used to be endless (joking) discussions on the Rennlist 914 boards about all the poor Naugas who sacrificed their hides so that our cars could have seats.
I had no clue that there was an actual Nauga ad campaign.
TIL that Naugas are real.
Moral of the story… If you see a nauga, kill it and use its skin to reupholster your car interior and your couch.
:-p
On the other side of the pond, Mercedes Benz developed MB Tex in [the early 60s?]. That stuff is so hard-wearing that you could build a bomb shelter out of it, it’s better than leather. There are former-taxi 80s 300D’s clattering around the third world with their upholstery still intact. I’ve used straight acetone to successfully clean stains on it.
The word Naugahide had totally disappeared down my memory hole. I will now try to work it into all my conversations.