The accessory counter at delivery is designed to catch you at your least critical moment. A useful filter: does this protect a surface that is expensive or impossible to restore, or does it just add something?
Worth it
Screen protector
We make these, so weigh that. But the logic stands independently: the infotainment display is the most-touched surface in the cabin, it is the only major interior surface with no repair path, and replacement is a head-unit assembly rather than a panel. A few hundred rupees against a five-figure downside is not a close call.
Moulded floor liners
Not the flat universal mats — the deep-lipped, model-moulded kind. Footwell carpet is the second-hardest interior surface to restore, and monsoon water plus roadside grit destroys it in a season. A liner with a raised edge contains both.
Sunshade for the windscreen
Dashboard cracking, adhesive failure across the cabin and accelerated fading of every plastic surface all trace back to parked cabin temperature. A reflective shade is the cheapest intervention with the widest effect.
Boot liner, if you carry anything
Pets, plants, luggage, tools. A tray is trivially cheap next to re-trimming a boot floor, and it takes thirty seconds to hose off.
Depends
- Seat covers: worth it on fabric seats in a car that carries children or pets. On leatherette, you are covering a wipe-clean surface with a harder-to-clean one.
- Ambient lighting kits: purely aesthetic, and cheap kits mean cheap adhesive and a wiring tap into your fuse box. Fine if you accept that.
- Steering wheel covers: they can help on a car parked in the sun, but a poorly sized one slips, and that is a safety issue rather than a cosmetic one.
- Air purifiers: real benefit in heavy traffic, but only with genuine HEPA filtration and a replacement schedule you will actually follow.
Skip
- Dashboard "polish" and shine sprays. Silicone-based products create glare on the windscreen and accelerate the drying of the plastic they claim to condition.
- Universal trim-to-fit screen film. You are cutting a protector by hand, on the thing you are trying to protect, with scissors.
- Stick-on chrome trim. It traps moisture against paint and interior surfaces, and the adhesive lifts clear coat when removed.
- Cheap phone holders that clip to an AC vent. They break vent louvres, which are a dealer part, to save on a suction mount.
- Aftermarket "anti-glare" films with no optical specification. If the listing does not quote light transmission, it does not have a good number to quote.
The underlying principle
Spend on the surfaces that cannot be restored and that a valuer will look at: the screen, the footwells, the boot, the dashboard top. Everything else is preference, and preference is fine — it just should not be sold to you as protection.