My Car Prejudices: I Hate Chrome Door Edge Trim

Doortrim Top Ts2
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Like any human being, or at least near-human primate, I am replete with flaws and preconceptions and assumptions and unfair biases. I’m full of half-baked ideas and opinions, especially about cars and car-adjacent things. One opinion or bias or prejudice or whatever that I’ve realized I hold is something that, in hindsight, I’ve had for decades, ever since I was a kid.

It’s this: you know how some people put strips of chrome trim on the edges of their car doors? Well, those never look good. They look awful.

I know there may be some readers who have cars with such chrome trim, and I don’t mean to offend, but I can’t stay silent on this any longer. When I was a kid, my family had a 1980 Honda Accord sedan, and my mom, my very own mother, had the dealer install chrome trim on the door edges, and even as a child I knew something was wrong, something had been debased. Of course, back then, as a child, I didn’t have the words to express what I felt. But now, as a vastly older child, I do.

Doortrimads

This sort of trim isn’t something that’s some relic of the past, it’s still very much alive today, and as you can see above, people are spending hundreds of dollars to make their cars look vastly worse.

So, why do I harbor such animosity for chrome door trim? Because it looks good on precisely zero cars, give or take no cars. It breaks up the overall form of the car, and no car seems to work better when the door shut lines are emphasized and delineated with shiny trim. Sure, there are some cars that pay special attention to the shape of the door shutlines, and I certainly respect it when designers pay attention to such details, but this crap simply does not work:

Doortrimexamples

Car design since the 1930s has been about overall form; the era of cars being made of discrete, independent visual elements ended in the ’20s, and the only reason it ever was A Thing was because manufacturing ability needed to catch up. The bright piping on the door edges reminds me of one thing, and I don’t think it’s particularly flattering:

Captainkangaroo

Yes, Captain Kangaroo‘s coat. The white piping, outlining the lapels and pockets. That’s what it looks like. And if you’re not a decrepit, old bastard like myself you may not be familiar with Captain Kangaroo, but that doesn’t really matter. Look at that dude. Is that the look you want for your car? Really?

I am, as always, interested in your opinion, since this is the world’s most influential automotive community. So, let’s do a poll about this, to see how The People really feel about terrible car door trim that manages to ruin the look of pretty much any car, ever:

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Mercedes Streeter

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137 thoughts on “My Car Prejudices: I Hate Chrome Door Edge Trim”

  1. I never knew these were add-ons that people used deliberately. When I think “chrome door trim” I picture old 70s battleships that tried to hard to look premium. I have a feeling that now that I’ve read this article, I’m going to be seeing this stuff all over the place.

  2. You are not alone. I think it’s one of the most subtly trashy car accessories.

    The ultimate barf combo:
    Chrome door edges
    Vinyl top
    Chrome wheels

    Extra credit for gold-ified (?) emblems like they used to do on cars in the 90s.

    1. the tacky gold emblems were a mandatory dealer applied accessory at a lot of Toyota dealers around me in the 90’s. Nothing says high class and big monied like driving a Tercel with gold badging on it!

      1. All that being said… some of the Honda’s that came with gold badging looked ok in royal blue… might’ve worked on black as well… but on any other colour it’s worth spewing over

  3. I actually have China chrome ones on the Figgy… I think it fits that silly overdone car.

    But I would never dream of having it on the Porsche. Or VW. Or CItroën.

  4. I agree, the door trim is awful. However, do not be throwing shade on my man, Capt. Kangaroo. I never missed a show. Keep it up and I will say harsher words. Also, shout out to Bunny Rabbit.

      1. Fully agree! Dissin’ The Captain, Mr. Green Jeans, Bunny Rabbit, Mister Moose, and Grandfather Clock is unnecessary. In the immortal words of JD, “Is this where you wanna be when Jesus comes back?”

  6. This is the correct take. It looks gross, tacky, draws your eyes to all of the wrong places.

    Assuming you can see after 40,000 lumen light bar blocking the bottom of the radiator has left you with an afterimage of every single LEDs.

    On the Civic/Accord or Sentra/Altima on which it’s all installed.

        1. They said no. I tried. All of the plastic body parts on that ruck were total rotted out crap after 3 years. UV protectant and avoiding leaving it out of the sunlight were to no avail. First and last RAM I’ll ever own. Interior looked like it had 200k worth of wear by 45k.

    2. That depends on the quality. My 1995 f150 has a plastic chrome grille and is just thinking about getting delaminated and wrinkly 29 years later. But some cars get wrinkly and gross after like 8 years.

  8. Maaannn, you just don’t get it! Dig! It’s got to be gold to match the wire wheel hubcaps on a saweet 76 Eldorado with giant headlights. Goldfish platform shoes, leopard skin coat, and fedora complete the ensemble.

    1. To my eyes, the only real problem with the BMW’s is that it’s the whole thing, so it stands out too much. The Corvair’s on the other hand is just the very edge of another design element, so looks less tacked-on, more subtle.

  10. Holy crap. Thanks for the early childhood flash back. Even at age 3 that show sucked the big one. I always though the Capt. and Mr. Green jeans were just a little too weird. The photo also suggests that at least one of them is pretty stoned.
    But the Dancing Bear was cool. /s

  12. Hey now, let’s leave jackets with piping out of it, a bit of contrasting trim never hurt anyone in fashion! But yes, chrome trim on door edges always looks awful for precisely the reason you said. It ruins the generally horizontal flow of the car with big, bright, cheap af vertical lines.

    1. That’s what I find intriguing about it – it seems a reaction to the amorphous monochrome blob thing we’ve had to deal with once car design went aero in the late 80s.

      But producing long, horizontal trim to mimic the pleasingly break up effect on older cars is prohibitive (not to mention probably near impossible for the average person to install straight), so they produce the only other option, and I’m sure they eventually talked themselves into “this is totally classy, right??” but yeah…

  14. It doesn’t look completely out of place on that… first gen Camaro?… about halfway down the article. But anything outside the age where chrome was applied by the pound, absolutely agree.

      1. To me, the Chrome Age ends when the 5 MPH bumper gives way to body color bumper covers. Mid to late 70s if I have to put a year on it. Anything after that, chrome door edges, absolutely not. Before that… maybe.

        1. Yeah I can see that. I was thinking about how 1960 had a massive reduction in chromage compared to 58-59, and how Pontiac and John Deloreans were already getting rid of chrome front bumpers in 1963(?)

  15. Costa Rican Series Land Rovers must be your automotive hell. The ones I’ve seen have add on chrome trim on every accessible edge, doors , wheel wells and even the hardtop panels

  17. Captain Kangaroo is perhaps the outlier on the bad end of this look; the outlier on the good end is of course Number 6 once he’s in The Village.

    Be seeing you.

  18. Hey, I wore a jacket with piping like that almost every day in high school, it was green with yellow trim, looked fine in context

    But it doesn’t belong on car doors

  19. See the problem is you don’t have the rest of the chrome accessories that make it look good. You know, the fake portholes and words plastered on the back that have nothing to do with the car, both of of above misaligned with anything on the car.

    3. That reminds me, I need to track down some three hole Venti-Ports for my old LeSabre (V6 with Custom trim so three is the number you shall count)

        1. Related, it’s funny watching Ford go back and forth on stick on chrome vents.

          And it’s been at it for decades at this point (e.g. the original Mustang’s vestigial side radiator vents).

    4. There’s an SN95 Mustang in my neighborhood on which its owner has used these chrome trim pieces to spell out his name across its doors. All at right angles.

    5. ^^correct. Pickups seem to take it next level with the stick on chrome door handles, chrome gas door, chrome mirror plates above the rockers all they way down, and redundant back window sticker repeating the trucks brand. Bonus for the extra led blinker/ brake below the tailgate

  21. I think the people who install this stuff (chrome or otherwise) want to be able to ding other peoples’ doors with impunity while protecting their own.

    The people who like the chrome version probably installed one of those chrome fuel filler flap covers, too, for that added touch of dumbassery.

  22. It does make finding doors easier when you’re drunk. Oh, would you look at that, the old Grandfather Clock in the corner is saying it’s time to go …

    3. Growing up in Cincinnati, I was more of an Uncle Al kind of guy.
      (Fun fact: The Uncle Al show was going to be what Captain Kangaroo was, but ABC wouldn’t let Al out of his contract to go to CBS, and the rest is history.)

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