By Damien Dunn
A proper set of floor mats for your car is one of the most useful accessories for your vehicle. They cover your floor area, dry your trainers, keep your feet firmly placed on the pedals and introduce a little comfort to your journey.
Car mats are conversely the most abused accessory in your vehicle. Consider the conditions they have to put up with - dirt, oil, and even tar. Your car mats bear the brunt of your everyday life and therefore have to be capable of the job.
Those with small children will also appreciate how rapidly the carpets in your vehicle can look worn. One or two trips to the countryside and a few dirty trainers later, and your nice clean mats are looking decidedly worse for wear. If your job dictates that you use your car often, you will no doubt understand how constantly getting in and out of your vehicle can wear on your mats. All of the material you bring into the car ends up under your feet and is soon pressed into the fibres of your mats. Those footwells you vacuumed over the weekend will look pretty unkempt by midweek and very quickly, despite your best efforts, muck becomes forever engrained in your car mats.
So why do drivers often choose to buy poor quality mats in favour of a set specifically tailored for their vehicle? We all like to save money as and when we can, however there are certain items that shouldn't be scrimped on. You wouldn't knowingly buy poor quality food, however tempting the price tag. You wouldn't stay in a cheap hotel with bad reviews would you? Similarly, for many people their car is their most prized possession, so why protect its interior using poor quality mats, making the car look cheap and unloved in the process? There really is no complicated science involved here, it simply comes down to using decent quality materials to manufacture the mats in the first place.
I went into my local discount centre last Thursday and, as you do, browsed the motoring accessories. On the bottom shelf, just below the screen wash, was a stack of car mats being sold at an astonishing £2.99 per set. How is that even possible? Without even getting into the moral question of how poorly the factory workers must have been paid for their labours, how on earth can a full set of car mats be manufactured to a half decent specification at that price point? Then factor in the journey from the Far East to the UK, passing through one, two or even three importers and distributors along the way, and taking into account the retailers profit margin, it just doesn't add up.
I soon found out how it added up after all. The mats were made from a coarse cord carpet, with a heel pad that was stuck on with some kind of adhesive. I can honestly say that not a single part of the mat would have been any more than 2mm thick, in fact they felt like some kind of carpet and paper hybrid that would offer zero protection to a car owned by even the most careful of drivers.
Seriously now, the average new car costs what, around £15,000? The average used car around £5000? For a product that will protect your interior, make driving more comfortable, look stylish and increase the resale value of the vehicle by up to 5%, is it really too much to ask to pay £25-30 for a decent set of tailored car mats?
The solution is quite obvious, a set of car mats manufactured using a high quality automotive carpet, heel pad, edging and backing, tailored for your specific model to guarantee a perfect fit. Tailored mats are designed to wrap around your foot area, stopping them from sliding around. A decent quality backing and trim ensure that dirt and moisture are held within the mat, and specifically designed car mat materials ensure your car mats are easy to keep clean.
A proper set of floor mats for your car is one of the most useful accessories for your vehicle. They cover your floor area, dry your trainers, keep your feet firmly placed on the pedals and introduce a little comfort to your journey.
Car mats are conversely the most abused accessory in your vehicle. Consider the conditions they have to put up with - dirt, oil, and even tar. Your car mats bear the brunt of your everyday life and therefore have to be capable of the job.
Those with small children will also appreciate how rapidly the carpets in your vehicle can look worn. One or two trips to the countryside and a few dirty trainers later, and your nice clean mats are looking decidedly worse for wear. If your job dictates that you use your car often, you will no doubt understand how constantly getting in and out of your vehicle can wear on your mats. All of the material you bring into the car ends up under your feet and is soon pressed into the fibres of your mats. Those footwells you vacuumed over the weekend will look pretty unkempt by midweek and very quickly, despite your best efforts, muck becomes forever engrained in your car mats.
So why do drivers often choose to buy poor quality mats in favour of a set specifically tailored for their vehicle? We all like to save money as and when we can, however there are certain items that shouldn't be scrimped on. You wouldn't knowingly buy poor quality food, however tempting the price tag. You wouldn't stay in a cheap hotel with bad reviews would you? Similarly, for many people their car is their most prized possession, so why protect its interior using poor quality mats, making the car look cheap and unloved in the process? There really is no complicated science involved here, it simply comes down to using decent quality materials to manufacture the mats in the first place.
I went into my local discount centre last Thursday and, as you do, browsed the motoring accessories. On the bottom shelf, just below the screen wash, was a stack of car mats being sold at an astonishing £2.99 per set. How is that even possible? Without even getting into the moral question of how poorly the factory workers must have been paid for their labours, how on earth can a full set of car mats be manufactured to a half decent specification at that price point? Then factor in the journey from the Far East to the UK, passing through one, two or even three importers and distributors along the way, and taking into account the retailers profit margin, it just doesn't add up.
I soon found out how it added up after all. The mats were made from a coarse cord carpet, with a heel pad that was stuck on with some kind of adhesive. I can honestly say that not a single part of the mat would have been any more than 2mm thick, in fact they felt like some kind of carpet and paper hybrid that would offer zero protection to a car owned by even the most careful of drivers.
Seriously now, the average new car costs what, around £15,000? The average used car around £5000? For a product that will protect your interior, make driving more comfortable, look stylish and increase the resale value of the vehicle by up to 5%, is it really too much to ask to pay £25-30 for a decent set of tailored car mats?
The solution is quite obvious, a set of car mats manufactured using a high quality automotive carpet, heel pad, edging and backing, tailored for your specific model to guarantee a perfect fit. Tailored mats are designed to wrap around your foot area, stopping them from sliding around. A decent quality backing and trim ensure that dirt and moisture are held within the mat, and specifically designed car mat materials ensure your car mats are easy to keep clean.
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