leather vs cloth seats in my 94 M
 

I have a choice between the two, and personally like the look of the black cloth vs the tan leather, but I was wondering if you had any opinions on why I shouldn't ditch the leather? :confused:

No

Leather is comfortable, sucks ass trying to hold yourself in place around corners.

I'd ditch the tan seats. Go with either black cloth or leather. I have leather and love it, but I also have a 6pt harness for when I need to stay put.

word x 3

Drive naked on a hot summer day you wont have a problem ;)

Do the seats have the built in speakers?

I like the Tan leather w/ the speakers in mine...

yeah, both the seats have built in speakers

i'll probably go with the cloth since i slide off the leather. lol

every tan seat i've seen on miatas look like they were pulled out of pig manure. after 10+ years, all the leather surfaces are nasty.

no thanks. cloth ftw on these cars. this ain't no mercedes. duh.

That and cloth is much more durable in convertibles than leather.

I'm 6'3" and leather seats seem to be thicker, so I'm more comfortable in cloth seats.

I'd disagree. I think leather is better in a convertable, look how faded and shitty looking most NA black cloth seats look.

Having said that, Mazda leather is shite.

my miata's leather looks like it could survive nuclear winter.

I've been in the dealership world for a while, and I've talked to a lot of upholstery shops, and for the most part, they seem to agree that leather doesn't last quite as long as cloth. But at the same time, I think the climate has a lot to do with the life span.
And yes, Mazda leather sucks, had a '91 RX7 convertible and that leather was horrible. The cloth on my '95 still looks almost new (except for the driver's outer bolster, but even that is barely worn).

I reupholstered some '95 "M" seats in black leather/black perforated leather. i used a much higher grade learher than OEM, a little thicker too.

I like them a lot more than my faded stock cloth seats that gave me monkey ass on long drives.

leather vs cloth is a personal preference. i love my leather seats, they're rare but subtle and uniquely my own. i think they breathe better than my stock cloth seats did.

Nuclear winter = no problem.

A few errant rays of sunshine poking out from behind a cloud on a warm spring day = the suck.


Seriously, all else being equal I like the look of leather in a sports car- unless it happens to be a convertible. Every Miata with leather seats I've seen looked horrible- faded and cracked.

In terms of performance however, it's cloth FTW. With the stock seat belts, cloth seats do a much better job of holding ones arse securely in place when cornering. I've never driven a car with leather seats that I didn't feel like I was sliding around in. Ok- the one exception would be a friend's '80s vintage Ferarri 512 that I once drove. You didn't feel like you were sliding around inside that car because instead you felt that you were being squeezed in a vise and had a large anvil placed upon your genitals, which was not a bad thing because the steering felt like the helm of the HMS Marshal Soult and the shifter was apparently connected to the transmission by means of a depleted uranium rod 36" in diameter and containing forty-two helm joints. It was not a comfortable car to drive.

The problem with the leather in the Miata is that it's embossed. So you can't condition it and it cracks. So you've got sub-par leather coverd with plastic.

Aftermarket covers are much nicer.

I went ahead and did it! In case anybody else wants to, here's how it looks [switching out the pass. seat today for a nicer one]:

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j3...b/akfjafds.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/urklab/asfd.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j32/urklab/jhdijd.jpg
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j3...ab/jkasfsd.jpg

I also ditched the soft top. :bigtu:

The only problem I ran into was that the leather seats had built in seat belt connectors, so I had to take them out of my other miata as well as the bolt.

Sorry for the crappy pics, but it was a camera phone :td:

Uh blaque that has no value from what i can see. Did you forget some pics?

What?

Ok im gonna spell this out all these pics show is a soft top delete and some black cloth seats in a tan miata. No before pics of a faded seat or anything of the sort you might as well have taken a pic of my car or any other car with no softtop and a cloth upholstered seat. So the jist of this is I dunno where you where trying to take us with your pics or your account of moving the seatbelt bolt. But somehow i am stuck in a holding patern with no runway in sight.

Dude, I was just letting people know how it looks with black seats. That was the reason I started this thread, to know whether or not it will look good and I finished the thread with the outcome.

That gave me a good laugh! Very true too, I got to sit in a old ferrari and I couldent even imangine driving it!

Oh whoops i forgot you where the OP http://forum.miata.net/vb/images/smi...smiley-034.gif