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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