Why Vehicles Have Carpeted Wheel Wells [Yes, This Is Why]

Let me guess, you just bought a new car, and noticed it had a carpeted wheel well, also known as an inner fender! Much like me after finding out about these carpeted wheel wells, you ask yourself, “why does my vehicle have carpeted wheel wells”?

Why carpeted wheel liners?

It is pretty simple actually, and it is not just to annoy you, and is really the exact opposite. While it may seem that these vehicle designers must be insane, this really is to deaden the sound from road noise.

Car manufacturers are constantly trying to find ways to make things more comfortable for you when you are driving your car. One way to do that is cut down on the road, and tire noise!

The easiest, and probably the best way to do this is by making it so that the sound itself is soaked up by these carpeted inner fender liners.

Pros of carpeted wheel liners

Cuts down dramatically on road noise
Yeah, that’s about it

Cons of these carpeted inner fender liners

Catches a lot of debris like dirt and snow
Difficult to clean

How to clean inner fender wheel wells

After doing some research, it appears there are two ways that are easiest to clean this type of wheel well.

Power washing it – Make sure to be careful when doing this, as power washing anything can damage it. However it seems at least some people are finding it extremely successful and less time consuming to just spray it down with a pressure washer and move on! This will be the quickest way.
Scrubbing the wheel wells with a brush – After getting as much of the road grime that you can off of the carpet, use a hard brush to agitate the dirt out of the fibers. Then wash and repeat until you are done! While this is the more difficult way of doing it, it is less likely to damage anything.

What vehicles have carpets wheel liners

While it is difficult to say how many cars, trucks, and SUVs have carpeted wheel wells, there do seem to be a couple vehicles that keep coming up.

GM trucks and cars

It seems most GM trucks like the 2014+ Chevy Silverado, and the GMC Sierra have this. Also the C7 Corvette has had some online reports of having this carpeted inner fender liner.

Chrysler cars

Specifically I have seen that the Chrysler 300C has this, however I’m sure there are others.

Nissan

I have also seen some reports of Nissan adding this style of carpeting into their 2009-2015 Nissan Maxima!

Ford Escape

The last generation Ford Escape also has carpeting in their wheel wells.

Conclusion

While this might at first seem like an annoying and pointless thing to do to a vehicle, I am sure it is needed to give you the best experience possible.

I am sure if you really wanted to, you could find a way to remove the carpeting and be done with it, however I really do think the sound deadening that this feature provides far outweighs any downsides this gives.

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