Why car brands are making interiors with ocean plastics and bog wood

That story therefore has to contain elements of sustainability, personalisation, local sourcing, rarity, innovation and authenticity. It’s a tough ask, but for brands who have maintained high levels of craftsmanship down the decades, there’s an element of fun these days to creating the wow factor (or “surprise and delight moments”, as various industries wincingly call it) inside your next set of wheels.

Take Bentley, for example. This venerable British brand is at the very pinnacle of interior design  in the car world right now. One could argue it can afford to be when its cars command such high prices, but, like the engineering side of the industry, the design process is pyramid-shaped: what begins at the high end with research and experimentation, filters down slowly but surely to the mass market.

Bentley intelligently combines its legacy of craftsmanship (Mulliner, its coachbuilder, is the oldest such company in the world – it started as a saddler in 1559) with eye-popping innovation to source and use new materials. In early March, at the preview of a new model that remains under embargo until late spring, Stefan Sielaff, Bentley’s design boss, spoke to us about his “storytelling and experimenting”. The company is using the ash of rice husks in its exterior paint, and a bi-product of wine harvests that acts as an alternative textile to leather: both materials would otherwise be discarded but find a new lease of life with Bentley. It’s the next step in recycling: rather than re-using something that has already had a life, Bentley is looking at materials that have always been entirely discarded as part of a manufacturing process, and sent to landfill, as is BMW (see i3 leather tanning below).

Similarly, it has been busy reclaiming materials from nature. One great example is the 5,000-year old riverwood, reclaimed from Norfolk peat bogs by the Fenland Black Oak Project, and then there are the plastics taken from the ocean as part of the David Attenborough-inspired clean-up, which are being recycled into surfaces for the door trims. “Bit by bit, we gain experience with these materials”, says Stefan Sielaff. “Customers don’t mind experimenting with these materials for the story telling, and to make a statement – they are curating the new ideas.”

Maserati’s main sustainability story-telling will happen with the arrival of its first electric models in 2021, but for now it is experimenting with new textures and colours for existing materials, all of which have their own story. The marque released its Royale series at the start of 2020, which consists of 100 examples across the Quattroporte, Levante and Ghibli ranges. The series is defined by two exterior paint colours – Blu Royale and Verde Royale – and the series pays homage to the 1986 Royale Quattroporte.

Inside, there’s a woven leather surface across the seats, which uses thin strips of Nappa leather twisted tightly together, an old Italian craftsmanship tradition, that creates a light but strong fabric.

In a similar weaving of old and new ideas together, Rolls-Royce’s Cullinan offers a box-grain leather on the dashboard, which was used on Louis Vuitton luggage in the 1920s. Rolls-Royce says the idea is that it covers the areas that see the most wear in the car, and should age beautifully, in a lovely little example of the principles of the Bauhaus form-follows-function ethos.

At the other end of the market (almost; it’s still quite pricey), is BMW’s baby i3 electric urban car. From the car’s inception, BMW realised every aspect of the car would need to stay true to its function and to the spirit in which its customer would buy it. Thus the large surface areas inside are 30 per cent composed from kenaf, which comes from the mallow plant that coverts more CO2 to oxygen than most plants. The material sits where petroleum-based plastic did in previous BMWs. Much of the interior is trimmed with eucalyptus, which needs 90 per cent less surface finishing than other wood as it’s moisture resistant. It’s processed without chemicals and one of the fastest growing tress species. What leather there is, is tanned with extracts from olive leaves, which are otherwise a landfill-destined by-product of olive farming.

The importance of all these steps is not just in sustainable accountability: as Bentley’s Mr Sielaff says, consumers increasingly want to be sold a story, that they can then expound through ownership. It’s the face of more active consumerism, and for those car brands who still think cars are sold predominantly on power and handling, a rude awakening is coming.