Down South Vette Leather Console Cover

When it comes to sports cars, the Corvette is certainly a car that delivers the most sports car bang for your buck. Performance wise vs. cost, the Corvette is very hard to beat. In order for GM to create a car that comes close to exotic sports car performance, they have to save money somewhere. With the Corvette C5 and C6, the interior is an area that I would guess GM decided to save some production costs. Although the interior is pretty nice, it does not have some of the high quality materials you will find in cars of comparable performance statistics (also those same cars cost upwards of $100k). Most of the interior in the Corvette is made with leather look alike products and plastic, hence the reason for this review.

Down South Vettes has made a name for themselves upgrading the quality of the interior in the Corvette. Down South Vettes makes quality hand stitched, real leather interior accessories that really upgrade the interior appearance of your Corvette C6 (still waiting for the C5 offering). They offer leather console covers (complete with an embroidered logo), leather shift knobs, leather shift boots, door panels, and instrument clusters, etc..

I decided to take a closer look at the Down South Vette Leather console cover and see if it as good as other Vette fans had told me.

The one I ordered was ebony with red stitching and the Z06 logo embroidered on the top. It took about 10 days to receive it from the time it was ordered. When I opened the box, I was pleasantly greeted by the smell of real rawhide which permeated my car once installed. I could tell the experience was already starting off on the right foot The leather was soft and pliable and the hand stitching looked like it was something you would see in a Ferrari. The embroidered logo was perfectly centered and was not an appliqué but real embroidery which matched the factory logo exactly. The DSVette console cover also has additional padding that was comes in the OEM console cover. Other than the padding and skin change, everything else about the console cover is 100% OEM (hence the reason for a core exchange with every order).

Down South Vette Leather Console Cover

Keeping in mind that GM also sells an upgraded "leather" console cover, I wanted to compare the Down South Vette Console cover to the official GM accessory leather Corvette console cover and to the stock OEM cover. Comparing each cover side by side, there is a definite evolution from best to worst. The stock cover has zero padding and is made with some kind of plastic material. Does not look bad, but certainly looks no different than what you would find in a Silverado or Tahoe (nothing exotic and definitely made of high wear materials). The GM Leather Corvette Console cover is a step up, appears to be real leather, has a nice embroidered logo, but still does not have any padding and the leather appears to be a low grade leather. For the money, the GM Leather console cover is a pretty good upgrade but does not compare to quality of the Down South Vette C6 Corvette Leather Console Cover. Keep in mind that the Down South Console Cover cost about $80 bucks more than the GM version and you need to send in your old console cover after you make the swap but for the additional dollars and even with the headache of a core return the Down South Vette console cover beats everything else I have seen; hands down. The hand stitching across the top really sets it apart from any other leather console cover I have seen.

You can combine the console cover with the Down South Vette Shift boot and the DSVette Shift knob and you really can upgrade the appearance and quality of your Corvette's interior. One more thought, if you happen to be one of the lucky owners of the new 09 Limited Edition Z06, you can also order the console lid with 427 Embroidered on it (how it that for awesome!!!).

427 Console Cover