I actually don't care about the wood, but I do like the "pistol grips". But yeah, the going rate is pretty steep for either one.
LOL, I am seeing the
Does this mean you are looking for an opinion, or are we looking for entertainment from my usual contrarian rant, or perhaps both?
OK, I will oblige.
I think lots of these wheels look great, but I actually have a fetish over them in this weird sense: I perfectly despise varying textures in my hands as I turn a steering wheel! I mean, I mf$&/-@g HATE it!
I want it to be all made of something relatively soft and suitable to its task, which for me usually means just plain leather, and Heaven help me, even soft foam backed plastic foil! Yes, I am talking just like you had in a box stock 107, 116, 123, etc. I find the change of texture from wood, to leather, to wood as I turn the wheel completely disconcerting. I want to feel the same material all the way around as I turn the steering wheel. Similarly, I hate feeling any plastic on what should be my full learher shift knob. (Easy, Max and Andy. I'm not talking about that knob...)
Pretty stuff, the wood and leather wheels. I just hate using them
In the same way, I hate any protuberances except for the wheel spokes. I also loath flattened sections, or inconsistent radius. I also don't like them being too fat. It's a damn steering wheel for a car with power steering, for Pete's sake, not a piece of gym equipment!
So yes, I hate most modern steering wheels, and I do mean hate. Way too damn small! Hell, for years, no, make that decades, Mercedes-Benz was the only manufacturer that put a correctly sized (about 400 mm), smooth, yet covered with something appropriately grippy and still properly skinny steering wheel in a car. Now even they have succumbed to this cartoonish nonsense of these little effing deformed radio knobs for steering wheels. Dammit! Get this straight, everybody! Steering wheels have gotten too damn small, while your road wheels have gotten too damn big! Now neither one works worth a shit at its actual job!
So there you have it. I want mine all leather, all Alcantara, or all 1978's finest plastic foil over foam. A distant fourth to any of these for me is all wood. Too smooth and two slippery, not to mention it's hot in the summer, and cold in the winter. The only material I could imagine that would be worse would be just plain steel. Then again, if it was just plain steel, I would not be endlessly worried about scratching it, nor would I be watching it hideously crack after just a couple of years out in the world, as is the case with wood. But wood and leather together? At least on the actual grip surface? That would come out of my car within the first month of ownership, no doubt about it.
Infinitely more tolerable to me are the wheels that have the pretty wood away from the actual grip surface, like the one that Gixxer has pictured.
Yes, as you guys can probably also guess from this, I actually prefer the "stock" 124 wheel to the 124 "Sportline" wheel that was standard in the E500E. I've got a perfect "stock"/larger 124 wheel for it. Now, I just need to score the matching perfect airbag. And no, I can't trade you my Sportline wheel and bag because the E5E being what it is, I always want to have the original parts at hand, because you just never know....
