Grey Steering Wheel

[Lyons]

Folks, I'm on the look out or a GTi again and have noticed the 2005ish models appear to have a grey steering wheel, whereas the later ones (including my old 07) all have a black wheel.

Any reason why VW used the grey one to begin with? Are there any other interior alterations that were made along with changing the wheel to black?

[Yawn]

Dunno,


But I recently bought a second hand GTI wheel off Ebay and although it looked black on the photo turned out to be grey when it arrived. The advert didn't say it was black and I didn't thiink to ask so it was own fault really.

However I have a dark grey leather interior so it matches perfectly 

Result!

[MPS]

I think the black ones are real leather whereas the grey ones are leatherette. Another cost cutter by VW. Mines a 2005 '55' plate and has a black steering wheel.

[Lyons]

That would make sense. Any grey ones I've seen have always been super shiney and more plastic like.

[Eddie-NL]

I think the black ones are real leather whereas the grey ones are leatherette. Another cost cutter by VW. Mines a 2005 '55' plate and has a black steering wheel.

Grey ones are leather too

I think when the mk5 was launched they tried to make the cabin less black, mk4 dash everything was black

[stealthwolf]

Yup as above, the entire interior was changed from grey to black.

[BeezerDiesel]

I  had a 2006 Polo GTI which I added an Edition 30 steering wheel to (black with red stitching), and also a 2005 Golf GTI which had a grey steering wheel. The 2005 GTI had a better spec than later cars (blue tints, quality fog lights etc) so I suspect that VW changed the steering wheel to black as either part of a cost cutting exercise or just a model rationale as more models were introduced into VWs range that used the GTI wheel (Eos, R32 etc) around 2006 so they just fitted black steering wheels to all of them to save on production costs.
FWIW I thought the quality of the grey leather wheel was much nicer than the black one. The grey one had a slightly cushioned feel to it and the leather seemed a bit thicker and had a better finish. I've also had 2 mk6 GTIs now and I still think the original grey 2005 GTI steering wheel was the best made of the bunch.