leather or leatherette

[rochey6957]

Hey how can i tell if my car has leather seats or leatherette? im assuming the dash and such are leatherette.

thanks

[Pdwight]

A 318 , leatherette I would bet....same as my 323IS

[ECSTuning]

Well leather always smells like leather so if you put your nose to the seat you should be able to tell. Leatherette is tough and has some elasticity when you poke on it. Alternatively look under the seat for the edge of the seat cover, if its material backed it shouldn't be leather.

ECS Tuning

[flyfishvt]

There are several ways to tell.

1) look under the rear seat bottom for the build tag. Its a 6" square piece of paper that lists all options your car came with from the factory.

2) if the build tag isn't there you can get a copy of it from any dealer. Go to the service dept with your vin and they can pull it up for you.

3) if the dealers aren't willing to help then you have to start pulling parts of the seat off. The plastic seatback is held on with two torx screws on the bottom. Remove the headrests and remove those two screws and the seat back will pop off. If its a coupe then you need to remove the handles and the handle trim before you take off the seat back. Once the seatback is off you should be able to see the white tag on the seat cover that has a part number on it. You can look up that part number on Realoem and see what they list it as. At the same time you can look at the tabs that hold the seat cover onto the frame and see if they are leather or vinyl.

[heifetz17]

There's a much, much easier way. As stated above, leatherette has some elasticity to it. Simply poke it with your finger. If it's leatherette, it will be somewhat elastic and stretch as you poke it. Leather has no elasticity.

A 318 is most likely leatherette.

[rochey6957]

Just wondering cause my ti and my dads I are distinctly different.

[flyfishvt]

If you're wondering about the rear seats then pull them out and look for a spare flap of material. The back of the leather will look like suede. You'll know instantly if its leather.

[aquariusxm]

Great...I have a sweet 318ic with tan interior and would like to know what works best cleaning the leatherette? I've used a couple of 'leather' cleaners and just recently bought Turtle Wax Leather and Vinyl cleaner. I have a small scrub brush to really get the dirt out. When you drive with the top down, alot of street dust gets into the surface of the material. Please advise...thank you guys.

[flyfishvt]

The place to focus on is the seams. dirt acts like sand paper over time. Any mild (non alkaline) detergent will work fine or anything that is made specifically to clean leather. Use a super soft brush or you'll eventually damage the leather. A toothbrush works great on the seams. Cleaning is only one part of the picture though. If you have real leather it has to be treated with conditioner to prevent it from drying out. Fake leather is not as critical.

Check out the deailing forum. This is probably a daily item.

[dah328]

I pulled the rear seat on my wife's car and there wasn't a build options tag, but there was a tag identifying the seat material and color. Fyi, "Leder" is German for leather and "Kunstleder" is imitation leather.

[flyfishvt]

Yup every real leather seat Ive seen is called LederSoft.