White Leather - Great for Stoned Pop Stars, Not for Cars - 2014 Mini Cooper Hardtop Long-Term Road

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White Leather - Great for Stoned Pop Stars, Not for Cars - 2014 Mini Cooper Hardtop Long-Term Road Test

The leather upholstery in our 2014 Mini Cooper looks nice, but it also shows a lot of dirt.

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ebeaudoin

I've got light gray in my 2001 Camry (129,000 miles) and darker gray in my 2010 Odyssey (81,000 miles). However, both have cloth interiors. Neither vehicle shows much (if any) indication of wear. I'm a big fan of cloth seats in general.

bc1960

I'd never buy an all-black interior again from an aesthetic standpoint, but in the absence of real colors I'd be amenable to brown/espresso like the A3. I got "sand" fabric in my '14 Mazda3 and it's OK, not too bilious but nice contrast with the majority black. I will point out once again that black interiors only 'conceal' black(ish) soils and not commonplace clays, sandstone and limestone dust, etc. And I know that somewhere along the beach between LA and San Diego there's a lot of dark orange/red sand and rock. I wouldn't ding a car's reputation for its caretakers' sins.

stevej2001

I've had both. I don't have kids at home anymore, so the light interior did fine for 4 years. Now I've got black, that I expected to hate since I live where it gets over 110. Surprisingly, the black leather isn't that bad when I get in on a scorching aternoon.

zimtheinvader

" presumably because we've been grinding dirt into it for a year now and haven't done much upholstery cleaning"

I know some people do actually treat their own cars this way but seriously who ignores a white car interior for an entire year?

Since most cars, that aren't really high end, have coated leather they clean up pretty quick and easy on a regular basis.
And the big plus with leather is you never get an electric shock from sliding across the fabric.

nsbio1

Another vote for cloth seats. They simply work better for anything other than containing major liquid spills. Leather does have its place, but I still do not get it why cow hide is considered a luxury material. The only thing that is "more luxurious", apparently, is leather with holes in it, aka perforated leather - try to spill anything on that! What's next - beef jerky dashboards and door handles made out of bones?

Sliding across fabric might in theory give electric shock, but in my 15 years of driving several cars with cloth seats I have experienced this exactly zero times. Maybe it only applies to certain car makes.

As for color, I have had both black and white cloth seats and they all hold up pretty well without discoloration or staining. I shampoo-vacuum cars approximately every two years and that keeps the seats in top shape. Admittedly, leather requires less work to maintain because going through the car with carpet shampoo vacuum takes a good 2+ hours.

prndlol

I have ivory leather seats in my CTS and they show only light smudges that I clean with nothing more than a rung out in hot water hand towel and a little soap.

jorocojaja

Absolutely made a point to switch to black when I got my second Nissan Leaf. I love light interiors and had beige on both of my MINIs which looked ace, but the standard grey interior (in addition to the planet-has-a-fever materials) in early Leafs were hard to keep looking halfway decent.