Cars We Drive!

[clee1982]

or be a reasonable man just get E450 wagon..., or even more reasonable, V90, and if you want a bit more ground clearance V90 CC

 

[clee1982]

now had G20 M340 wagon be available in the US back in end of 2018 I can see myself went that way instead

 

[Omega Male]

or be a reasonable man ...

On here? Ha.

 

[clee1982]

if I stay in MB I would probably look at E53 as well

 

[TheFoo]

E450 wagon would be a particularly sophisticated choice.

 

[HRoi]

Not sure if I mentioned it here, but I’ve been working on a complicated front seat project for my GT3.

I had my car built from the factory with the single-piece carbon fiber buckets:

View attachment 1399688

These are absolutely amazing seats. A lot of people seem to find them too upright, but my wife and I think they are extremely comfortable and supportive even after multi-hour drives. Plus, I think they are gorgeous.

However, in addition to having very little adjustability to speak of, these seats don’t fold. This was okay when I only had to carry my daughter in the back, as she is old enough to squeeze behind the front seats herself and climb up into her car seat. However, that doesn’t work for my four-month-old son! We need more room to maneuver him into place.

The solution? I chose the option of installing OEM folding carbon fiber buckets.

View attachment 1399689

These were seats you could option on the GT3 outside the U.S. However, because they lack height adjustability and airbag sensors, they were not available to North American buyers.

I don’t think they look as good as my original seats, but I much prefer to stay OEM and they are attractive enough.

Easy right? Not even close.

First of all, the seats can only be sourced from Porsche—and only by a non-U.S. Porsche dealer. No biggie. I ordered from a German vendor at a decent price.

But Porsche will only sell these seats with black stitching and black leather pad inserts! My interior has platinum silver stitching and alcantara / houndstooth inserts throughout. The only ways to fix this are to: (1) completely re-upholster the seats or (2) find a little old lady in California with tiny fingers willing to spend two weeks manually picking out all the stitches and re-stitching each stitch by hand into the pre-existing holes without leaving any trace of alteration. Naturally, I went the second route. Though I didn’t have to literally find the old lady. I just connected with one of the many Porsche aftermarket specialists out there. She works for them.

I think they did a fantastic job:

View attachment 1399690

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Keep in mind, the factory does not stitch by hand! They use machines. Also, they stitch the individual leather pieces before they are upholstered onto the seats. The person in California who did the work on my seats had to do everything by hand, with the leather already glued on! It would have actually been cheaper to completely re-upholster—but then I’d lose the OEM leather.

Now the re-stitched seats are in transit from California to the shop in New York that works on my car. They will paint the plastic harness pass-throughs in Miami Blue.

Simultaneously, a guy in England is making replacement seats inserts using OEM houndstooth material that matches what I originally ordered from the factory. No, this fabric is not easy to get a hold of.

When the the seats are completed, the physical installation will be simple.

However! Remember, there are no airbag sensors. U.S. GT3s are coded differently and also don’t have a switch to manually turn off the passenger airbag. So, unless you re-code properly, you’ll have perpetual error lights. The solution is to re-code so that the passenger airbag is always on—which means no kids in the front. But that’s why I’m doing all this in the first place and why it all makes sense. Right? Right??

When the kids are both older, I’m going to install complete rear seats and seat belts. Eventually, when I don’t need to carry them around anymore, I’ll put the original single-piece buckets back in the car. And then it will be like I hadn’t gone through any of this in the first place.

This is a cool project.

when I reclaim my balls from my wife’s purse, I’m planning to get some seat inserts for my GT4 buckets.I’ve had exploratory conversations with P1 Designs..have you heard of them? And if so, why the “guy in England” and not them?

 

[TheFoo]

This is a cool project.

when I reclaim my balls from my wife’s purse, I’m planning to get some seat inserts for my GT4 buckets.I’ve had exploratory conversations with P1 Designs..have you heard of them? And if so, why the “guy in England” and not them?

Price and availability. Garry in the UK is a good value.

 

[HRoi]

Price and availability. Garry in the UK is a good value.

Ok, gotcha. P1D is at around $1400 for two flat fabric thingies, Porsche tax included

 

[TheFoo]

Ok, gotcha. P1D is at around $1400 for two flat fabric thingies, Porsche tax included

Yeah, Garry is more like $1,100 USD.

 

[edinatlanta]

Anyone else think foo is the posterchild for retailers who love "informed consumers"

 

[HRoi]

Oh god who let Edina in

 

[clee1982]

and if you want E450 wagon better do it now, looks like MB is following Volvo/Audit jumping on the raise up band wagon (MB call it all-terrain, volvo call it cross country, audi call it allroad)?

2024 Mercedes-Benz E-Class Wagon Review, Pricing, and Specs

The 2024 Mercedes-Benz E-Class wagon has a somewhat small cult following, yet it gets an entirely new look and a wider cabin, plus a small bump in horsepower.

www.caranddriver.com

 

[A Y]

Good job on the GT3 seats. That is an impressive effort to get it done.

I'd get a Panamera Sport Turismo over an MB wagon unless you want to be really stealthy. My mechanic swaps AMG V8s into W210 wagons, the price is not insane, and the results are pretty stealthy too depending on how many aero bits you put on the car.

 

[edinatlanta]

Oh god who let Edina in

twss

 

[otc]

(MB call it all-terrain, volvo call it cross country, audi call it allroad)?

VW called it "Alltrack" although they killed it for 2020. Maybe it will come back--unclear if it is dead because americans hate wagons or just dead while they handle the mk7 to mk8 transition.

Seems like the latter...
Although we currently get the Variant as the Golf SportWagen and the all-wheel-drive Golf Alltrack, VW will not be sending us the new one. Just for confirmation, we asked a VW U.S. spokesman if there was any chance we might see it on our shores. His terse reply: "None."