Chris Harris swaps leather for retro velvet on his E60 M5 Tour: Love it or hate it?

Former Top Gear presenter Chris Harris decided to add some retro vibes with a new fabric interior for his BMW M5 Touring

                                        https://www.carscoops.com/author/sam-d-smith/                                    

put Sam D. Smith

4 hours ago

Chris Harris has long extolled the virtues of fast old BMW station wagons. Having previously used an E34 station wagon that underwent an M5 conversion, he is now the proud owner of an E60 M5 longroof. But while most of us agree that a V10 estate is a pretty distinctive offering in its own right, the first Top Gear the host has injected a huge amount of personality with a controversial new interior. The chosen material? Corduroy.

Purists look away, but a redone leather interior simply wouldn’t cut it for Harris. The automotive journalist and TV presenter chose to sit in the same type of fabric more commonly associated with a geography teacher’s trousers.

Related: Chris Harris says he warned BBC about safety before Top Gear crash

In the past, the material chosen to equip a car could say a lot about a person or, indeed, about the manufacturer’s aspirations in terms of bringing a model or finish to the market. Vinyl was the lowest rung, while general fabric could be had in varying levels of softness.

In the West, leather has been the gold standard of perceived luxury, which is a little strange because it’s not always that comfortable and it has drawbacks. The Japanese have always preferred the more luxurious velvet to leather – for example, the Toyota Century, the Japanese answer to the Rolls-Royce, featured almost exclusively fabric seats.

That’s the spirit of Harris’ M5. In many ways, corduroy offers many benefits over the leather that comes with the E60. On the one hand, it is more comfortable. And in an Instagram post, he reveals that it’s grippier than “disgusting, fake-feeling, non-sticky, always the wrong temperature fake leather.”

The last time we remember corduroy being offered on a car interior was the 911 Targa 4S Heritage Design Edition. Porsche spiced up that limited run with references to the 356 from the ’50s and ’60s, while the two-tone interior featured the same material on the seats and door panels.

So, does Chris Harris’ retro-inspired upholstery look cool, or are you reminiscing about your high school teacher’s questionable fashion choices? Either way, you can’t deny that it’s quite a statement.