@jtsander, Barkydog: Can you get MOM jeans in leather? (Old Saturday Night Live spoof commercial)
Now that the seat issue seems to be solved, I might recommend you consider other vehicles. We drive Escapes at work, and have for the past 3 generations. They are exceedingly problematic, and the only reason we continue to drive them is that we lease them and they have the cheapest leases. I wouldn’t buy one for myself for anything.
If you do buy one, make sure you check the transmission fluid. That generation had a large problem with its transmissions that caused them to slip a lot. We were getting transmission fluid exchanges at 10k miles in ours because it looked like it had 50k miles on it.
And if you're looking for heated seats, I don't think there's many to be had with cloth seats.
I’ve seen a few models of Mazda vehicles that offered heated cloth seats; I know that confused me the first time I seen it
I heard about thing with the leather ‘seating surfaces’. As I recall a guy bought a 300Z and sued Nissan when he discovered the entire seat wasn’t leather. I don’t know if he got anywhere with it, but I think the consensus was, not only does it make it more affordable, but the synthetic is actually more durable, down where it attaches to the seat frame and gets scuffed by feet and cargo.
I hope he loses his suit. And his shirt. That’s absolutely ridiculous.
I think if you check the fine print it would say something like “leather trimmed”.
‘if you check the fine print it would say something like “leather trimmed”.’
Exactly
I’m sure that if you buy…let’s say…a Bentley, every bit of the seat material is genuine leather.
But, with “popularly priced” cars, the “leather” seats have had various parts trimmed in identical-looking synthetic material for…many years.
And, the brochure descriptions for these cars always use the term “leather trimmed”.
The way that it has been described to me is that only the seating surface is leather, and the sides and back of the seat are made of an identical-looking (and probably more durable) synthetic material. If your body is in contact with it while seated, it is leather. The parts that your body does not come into contact while seated are of a synthetic material.
On the newer Mercedes models, Consumer Reports advises NOT opting for the leather upholstery, as the all-synthetic imitation leather material looks just as good and is far more durable.
Our Hyundai Elantra has heated cloth seats. I accidentally got it turned on high once and thought it weird that my backside was sweating so heavily. Not much need for them in San Francisco.
If you want to have some fun some dull day, go to the Bentley web site and choose ‘Build my Bentley’. You can choose a main leather color and a trim color. Then you can specify which of the two you want every piece of leather in the cabin to be, and see a rendering. Want Butterscotch with Aubergine trim, with the seat piping and the upper door panels in the trim color, but the lower dash in the main color? There are a couple of dozen different pieces. I doubt they sell many cars configured that way, but you never know. You can also specify various kinds of embroidered Bentley logos on the headrests and other gewgaws. And various woods and finishes, of course.
There ate dozens and dozens of exterior colors, too. Configuring the convertible is the most fun because you can see inside and outside together. They also have a lovely design consultancy office in London that has samples of all the standard materials, as well as working with you to design a car with custom materials.