I spent a lot of time there and learned a great deal about high-end cars. My favorite was the Ferrari 512 Boxer. I would later own one of these amazing machines fulfilling a promise I made to myself at 18, but one thing I never forgot was the first one I ever saw. It was used, black and had 14k on the odometer. It was absolutely stunning and perfect in every way except for the leather on the seats. Mind you, in the mid 80's this was a six figure car, very spendy and with almost no mileage the leather already had eggshell cracks all through it. How could this be? How could leather crack so quickly?
Years later as I restored my Boxer, I learned that leather doesn't crack, the topical paint coating that factories use to color the leather does. That's right, leather is spray painted just like your car is. Sometimes, it's given a texture (it looks dimpled). The more dimpled it is generally the cheaper it is. I will not go into that now but will cover that in a later posting. So if it's just the topical coating that is cracking and flaking, does it mean you have to completely replace the leather? The simple answer is only if you want to spend too much money.
Take a look at the following photos:
These seats are from a Ford F350 Truck that had the front buckets and rear bench of a Expedition custom fit. However, they were in pretty bad shape as the owner had two large dogs that he hunted with, and they had scratched them up pretty good. The leather itself was structurally sound so we stripped the dye off and replaced it.
It can costs thousands of dollars to replace leather upholstery vs. hundreds to simply redye it. Recently we finished a project on a customer's car and completely redyed and repaired his leather for under $500.
If you have leather or vinyl that needs repair, don't just cover it with a cheap seat cover. Get it fixed like new.
