Ok, vent over.

Leather in cars doesn’t breathe because it isn’t full grain and is dyed with dye that coats and fills the pores to make it look more perfect. How do you tell? If your new leather is perfect looking, it is most probably top grain, the cheap stuff. Try to scratch it with your fingernail, did it change or scratch?

If you want breatheable leather, you have choices of Rolls, Bentley, and Aston Martin’s custom Connally hides, and the King Ranch Ford Truck (beautiful new, but not so much in 3 yrs when it shows every sweat and oil stain as a good full grain leather should) and perforated leather on a car seat, and it just wicks your sweat into the seat foam. Think about that when you are wearing sweat shorts, FOR 4 YEARS. I don’t want my car seats wicking my sweat to breathe, and then having my car smell like 4+ yr old sweat shorts.

BMW leatherette RULES, except in convertibles in Texas in July. Then you better have some sheepskins on the seats or you will curse every seat not made from cloth. The leatherette looks great new, and 4-10 yrs looks good still unless you park outside every day in that said Texas heat which will initiate every plastic piece and seat in the car to fade, crack, dry out and fail.

After you spend your 50+large on your beamer, you want that smell and the bragging rights of leather, but after 5 +yrs when your car is worth half, your kids, dog and briefcase have scratched the seats, and your bolsters look like you live getting in and out with sandpaper on your hip, then tell me your seats look better than BMW’s excellent leatherette.

Did you know you can buy new leather smell in car smell sprays? hmmmmm

1. The leather on my last car (2007 335) had that special cooler in the sun feature which actually worked and the seats stayed cool even in the summer. In my precious cars the leather would get very hot when it got past about 85 degrees.
2. My fiancé is very pale and always wears a ton of sunscreen. Because the leather is porous, it’s very hard to get the sunscreen stains off. However, I just cleaned off the leatherette in my new car with an APC and it came right off.
3. I live in LA, which is a very sooty city. Soot seems to infiltrate the leather somehow and is also almost impossible to get out.
4. Leatherette does feel hot in the summer sun, but I haven’t noticed anything gummy.
5. The look, as far as I’m concerned, is identical when new. However, it won’t wear in like leather does. It will always look likeable new surface. Personally, I like the look of a worn in leather.

I don’t know that either would be a dealbreaker for me, but in the long run I imagine the leatherette will be easier to maintain but will never look quite as nice as a worn in leather.

(facetious, not sarcastic)

I was appalled when I tried the leatherette… it was like tough vinyl – which I think it is, but they could have done much better making it feel like leather. Or even perforated some holes in it to breathe through.

Thanks!

Where as.. if you have something a bit more neutral and sterile like PLASTIC or quality cloth. It feels NEWER. So I think you would have more demand for resale purposes over the long-run.