Becky

What make a car hotter - Black exterior, black leatherette interior, or both?

Oscar

The charcoal 90 was hotter than my black A4 because the 90 had leather (the same applies to the leatherette - I had a red Coupe GT with leatherette and those seats got as hot as the leather did in the 90). My black A4 has the sport cloth seats and they do not get that hot compared as if it had leatherette or leather.<p>Oscar

Kyle Bailey

I had similar concerns when I bought my A4 - in fact, I went to the dealer to buy a silver one but came home with black interior and exterior. I work in a part of southern CA where it is typically over 100 in the summer, and found that the black really isn't that bad. I don't think this car gets any hotter thasn my old Prelude,which was blue (also dark) with cloth seats. To answer your question, I would think that the interior color would be more of a factor, but that's just an uneducated guess on my part. I think window tinting would do a lot to reduce the interior temperature (and protect the interior) but I haven't done it.<p>Kyle<p>PS. Black exterior is a pain to keep looking good. But when it's clean and waxed it looks real good.

Bob V

In the past year, I saw something published about this. I wish I could remember where I saw this but it was from an authorative testing source. They maintained that the "hot car with dark paint/interior" idea was sort of an automotive "urban legend". They had data to support it! I can imagine, however, that maybe interiour air temps versus vinyl seat surface temps might be different.

Ken K

Although I don't have black leatherette, I once owned a car with black leather interior and made the mistake of parking the car facing west one summer afternoon. When I got in the car, I almost burned my back the seat was so hot. It took probably 30 minutes of driving for it to cool down to the point where it wasn't actually painful. I own a black-exterior, light-interior car now, and the heat is not a problem at all.<br>

stanj

I have Ecru leather and Santorin exterior. This summer in the hot deserts, the car was always nice cool inside.<p>- Stan<br><ul><li><a href="http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~stanj/Travel/Yellowstone/index.html">This summer A4 travel story</a></li></ul>

DaveN

The 5000 with the black exterior never seemed to get cool on those 95 degree days (didn't matter how often the air was worked on, it just couldn't keep up with the heat load). I had another 5000 with a dark brown exterior and it stayed much cooler, so anything other than pure black seems to help. The material the seats were made of seems to make a much bigger difference, cloth is just not as good at transferring heat to you. Ive had black cloth (not bad), black leatherette (bad), gray leather (also bad), and cream leatherette (good). For the record the air in the A4 is much stronger than the old 5000.

Josh

I've got silver/black leather - it's hotter than my Passat in dark green/tan leather