The last time we went car shopping, the most annoying use of the option package was Ford‘s. Certain colors were only available with the V8 and towing package, and the V8 was only available with other things that we’d rather not have. The end result was that the price jumped $6,000 or so for things we didn’t want to buy, and Ford lost a potential sale. This time the annoyance factor is all Honda‘s.
The Honda Odyssey comes in a number of trim flavors, between $25,195 and $38,495. The annoying feature is the leather seats. We don’t like them. We really don’t like them. But in order to get nifty features like variable cyclinder management, which you need for somewhat acceptable fuel economy, or stability assist, which prevents fishtailing, you have to get leather seats. I’d prefer not to choose between a better vehicle and cloth seats. I wonder what the lost profit is from not including cloth seats in those models.
At least you can cover the leather seats with $200 worth of seat covers. The Honda deal is still better than the Ford one, and more easily fixed. On the Honda Civic I just bought (my first new car ever!), I couldn’t get ABS brakes with the package I got; that’s worse for me than leather seats are for you…
The leather seats are not insurmountable, just annoying. I can imagine that Honda loses some sales because of it. While the sales brochure touts the handling and fuel economy, the salesman we worked with didn’t bother to bring them up once he found out we like cloth seats.