TuxMat Floor Mats Family-Proof Your Car While Classing Up Its Cockpit

My sister-in-law’s Toyota RAV4 has had a hard life. It was stolen, found again, repaired, and put back into service. Since then, it’s been commuting about 100 miles daily, transporting high-energy dogs, and sometimes carrying kids or cargo. I thought it deserved a little reprieve, so I installed a set of TuxMat floor mats to protect, and enhance, the vehicle’s interior. It was a significant upgrade, even over the heavy-duty mats the car already had.

Now, I don’t have any kids of my own; I became a family man by association. When I got hitched to my now-wife, I also got three siblings-in-law, which became six as they got married, two fathers-in-law, multiple mothers-in-law, and more recently, a niece and nephew. And that’s just the humans. My wife’s dad’s female Australian shepherd and male golden retriever got together a few years ago and spawned a whole adjacent family of fast-moving mutts. Everybody I just mentioned lives in a pretty tight orbit, socially and geographically. So almost every weekend turns into a family reunion, and pretty much every car in our collective fleet becomes a “family car” at least once in a while.

The other day I had to shuttle my dog Bramble and her dad Cal, who lives at my father-in-law’s farm next door, around since they can’t drive themselves. Having a couple of photogenic chaos muppets to look after was the perfect opportunity to borrow sis’ RAV4 and test the mettle of those new TuxMat floor mats.

TuxMat Materials and Design

As someone who’s handled and used many different floor mats, from universal cheapos to custom-made coconut fiber fancy options, TuxMat products are unique in how well they split the difference between toughness and classiness. The rigid construction, pronounced embossing, and deep channels give these mats an almost industrial-grade vibe of robustness, but the subtle texturing and super-clean lines also evoke highline-car-level luxury.

They’re flexible enough to install and remove fairly easily, but shape-holding to lock into the car’s floors and cover the carpeted parts of the footwell almost completely. The extra wings of coverage that come up around the seat sliders and way up into the top of the footwell provide more protection than I’ve seen with any other aftermarket mat.

Ease of Installation

TuxMat boxes come with velcro and plastic clips to help hold the product in place if you like, but in my experience, these are not necessarily critical. You won’t find paper instructions in the packaging but you probably won’t need them—installing floor mats is painless, even for somebody who never wants to touch a tool in their life.

If you would still appreciate some guidance on fitment, simply scan the QR code on the bright-green pouch in the box and you’ll be taken to TuxMat’s site with guides on how to pick mats, how to install yours, and even how to turn the shipping box into a toy—more on that later.

Compared to Other Floor Mats

My wife’s sister’s RAV4 was running a set of WeatherTech mats up front and a single-piece full-width OEM all-season (rubber) floor mat in the back when I picked it up for my TuxMat test. I’m sure you’re curious about how those compare. However, you’re probably also thinking it’s a little wack to have a product shootout sponsored by one of the competitors. For that reason, we’ll stop short of calling this a comparison test. But sponsor or not, look at the images—you can clearly see that TuxMat offers much more total coverage than the products we had in this RAV4 previously.

The units in the car had some wear and miles on them, but the TuxMat material is also visibly thicker than the alternatives. The TuxMat branding is much smaller, too. I personally appreciate the subtle silver emblem over larger aftermarket brand graphics.

Driver’s Footwell

We swapped a WeatherTech unit for TuxMat in the front. Take a look at the difference in coverage up the dead pedal to the left of the brake, and how the TuxMat wraps around the seat rail.

Passenger Side

You can see how high up the sides the TuxMat goes compared to the other unit on the front passenger side.

Rear Seats

Here you can see the coverage difference between the OE mat (left) and TuxMat’s product (right).

Spill Resistance

Style is a solid reason to switch out your floor mats because good ones like TuxMat’s products really do elevate an automobile’s interior (as we saw with a base-model Ford Maverick a few weeks ago). But the main reason you’re probably shopping for something like this has to be interior protection, right?

TuxMat floor mats essentially contain spills at three levels. The super-high walls that stretch up the sides of the footwell and around the seats keep big splashes from getting to your carpet. The deep channels in the mat keep messes corralled into even smaller sections. And finally, the fine texture you can see up close helps keep spills from sliding quickly across the mat.

I did a little practical testing to see how well our RAV4’s TuxMats would hold up against the two most common spills most family cars will see: drinks and snacks.

TuxMat Versus Liquid

Oops, clumsy Uncle Andy dropped his Yeti, and some 14-hour-old coffee formed a new canal across the passenger-side TuxMat. With a few swipe-and-wring-outs of an off-brand shop towel, I was able to clean the liquid up completely and leave zero evidence behind. Problem solved in seconds. You’re definitely not going to get coffee out that quickly from carpet, especially if you can’t tend to the stain until you get home from your errand run.

TuxMat Versus Crumbs

Pulverizing a corn chip on a TuxMat with my clog was a bummer—I really wanted to eat it, but the sacrifice had to be made for science. Crumbs are never really a problem for my family because we have nine dogs between the in-laws. Any food molecule within snout range is usually hoovered before somebody sees it. But if you have kids and don’t have a dog, you’re probably vacuuming snack scraps from your backseat footwells all the time.

Once again, TuxMat’s channels make it easy to round up a spill. And for the same reason it didn’t absorb the coffee; the crumbs didn’t get lodged or stuck in any fibers and were easy to pick out. I pulled the mat and shook it out to get the rest of the crumbs, but a vacuum would have taken them out even more easily if you had one handy.

TuxMat Versus Paws and Claws

Bramble usually hops all the way up to the back seat for long rides, but plenty of dogs like to rest in footwells or put their paws up on them when they get into a car. Especially when it’s something a little higher off the ground, like our RAV4 here. As far as scratches, I couldn’t see any visible damage after letting Cal the giant golden in and out of the car a dozen times. His daughter little Bramble couldn’t seem to make marks in a TuxMat either.

We did end up with a lot of fluff in the car. In springtime, both golden retrievers and Australian shepherds shed a lot. (Like, a lot.) Dog hair can’t be controlled as easily as drinks or food crumbs, but I did appreciate that it didn’t really stick to the TuxMat material either. A little shake-out got a lot of it gone … at least, from the floor. Getting dog hair out of headliner and seat fibers is a whole other challenge.

The Shipping Box Turns Into a Toy

Finally, if your family’s not as excited about floor mats as you are, they might still appreciate the box TuxMat ships its products in. Make a few tactical cuts, fold a few pieces, and you’ve got yourself an instant cardboard play car that somebody in your clan will have fun with, no matter what species they are.

Find Your Set

TuxMat products ship in over 600 OEM-perfect fitments for hundreds of vehicle makes and models. Same-day shipping is free and all TuxMat products come with a 30-day money-back guarantee, hassle-free returns, and a limited lifetime warranty. Check out the TuxMat site today and see what they’ve got for your car.

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