While a car's exterior is the first to catch your eye, the interior is where you most experience it.
.JPG)
And, that's one of the key places where the 2013 Dodge Dart will make its impact on shoppers and owners. Recently, I had the opportunity to talk with Head of Interior Design Klaus Busse. Klaus has been with the company since 2005, so he has a great perspective on the company's past, and how to improve the current and future vehicles.
In talking about the new Dodge Dart, he brought that perspective into the conversation about the four key objectives he and his team had in mind when developing the interior.
- Fit & Finish/Craftsmanship: High-quality, soft-touch materials, low tolerance for gaps in the seams or where interior components fit together.
- Maintaining Key Strengths: Unlike many interiors of the past, there is no boxiness to the Dart's interior. There are no straight lines. All aspects "invite" occupants to touch them, he said.
- Be Adventurous with Colors: In the past, our interiors were monochromatic, Busse said. Then, there was a period when grey was banned from all interiors. Now, the design team is being adventuresome and combining colors. One example is on the Dodge Dart Limited model, which has an option for dual-color stitching in the instrument panel like the Grey/Citrus Peel combination in the image above.
- Technology: Many features you'd find in luxury vehicles are available with the certain Dodge Dart models. These include the new Uconnect system which includes an 8.4-inch touchscreen that manages not only the entertainment and navigation, but the climate as well and the 7-inch TFT (Thin Film Transistor) LED instrument cluster that is customizable by the driver for the information they want in a format they like.
