‘Luxury’ leather seats an increasingly popular pick
Where the rubber meets the road is sometimes less important to new-car buyers than where the flesh meets the cowhide. We are talking about leather seats, among the fastest-growing and most expensive options on new passenger vehicles.
Once the province of conservative European luxury cars or flashy Cadillacs, leather has permeated the new-car market.
According to Wards Auto, a Detroit-based publisher of automotive information, 28.3% of all domestic vehicles and 49.8% of all imports had leather seats as a factory-installed option. And each year leather’s market share creeps up a percentage point or two.
Despite its growing popularity, leather has many downsides.
It is almost impossible for car buyers to get information about the quality of leather used in any specific vehicle, and cheap leather seats not only look like vinyl but also can prematurely deteriorate even in normal use. Everybody knows leather gets hot in the summer, but most people do not realize how hot. Hospital burn centers report that they are seeing growing numbers of superficial burns caused by leather seats.
But leather is undeniably popular right now.
“Leather is another feature, and features are what sell cars nowadays,” said Karl Brauer, editor of Edmunds.com, the automotive research and information company in Santa Monica. “Most models are already ultra-safe and ultra-dependable, so automakers are down to one-upping each other on features rather than styling and engineering.”
Leather has become a fad, though whether it will fade away is anybody’s guess. Perhaps a decade from now people will remember leather seats as they now recall the crushed velour seating that was so popular in the 1980s or the vinyl roofs that were ubiquitous in the 1970s.
Brauer is not convinced that people actually like leather seats, but they clearly do like having the bragging rights. “Oh, yeah, I got the leather” is a typical refrain of a new-car buyer, he says.
Leather seats are among the most costly options. An option package that includes leather seats typically adds $1,775 to the cost of a new car. Where automakers offer leather seats as a stand-alone option, they range in price from $500 to $1,200. That obviously makes them a high-profit item, considering the option only involves the covering of the seat. You could buy an entire leather couch for the same price.
Consumers typically assume that all leather is a premium product, but the quality varies widely when it comes to car leather. In buying a leather couch in a furniture store, it is possible to determine whether the cowhide is split or full grain and whether it is finished with a polyurethane spray or oil. But you will not find important details like that in most automotive showrooms.
“One assumes if you get a premium car, you get premium leather, but that is a fallacy,” Brauer said. “For the most part, you can’t get information about the quality of the leather.”
Surveys of buyers by automotive research firm J.D. Power & Associates show that some seat makers consistently outperform others, said company analyst Allison Rehm. Araco, a Japanese firm that supplies seats only to Toyota, has won Power’s top award for seat quality two years in a row. Ranked behind Araco were other companies largely unknown to consumers: Trim Masters, Lear and Johnson Controls all made above-average seats. By contrast, Visteon, General Seating, Hyundai, Intier Auto and T.S. Tech were ranked below average by Power.
Quality leather, like quality fabric, will hold up better in the long run. But leather does need care. Meguiar’s, Armor All and Dr. Tanner’s, among other brands, manufacture car leather care products. Once leather becomes deeply embedded with dirt, it may never get clean again. So regular maintenance with a cleaner and a conditioner is perhaps more important than with fabric.
Another important tip is to keep a towel or sweatshirt handy to sit on, particularly if you are wearing shorts. The University Medical Center of Southern Nevada reported this summer that it was seeing more drivers with burns from leather seats, which could easily heat up to 120 degrees in the summer.
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Write to Ralph Vartabedian at Your Wheels, Business Section, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012; e-mail: ralph.vartabedian@latimes.com.
