My dealer, mini of cincinnati, offers leather interiors done by an aftermarket company. Same warranty. $1500 basic and $1900 for some nicer leather. Obviously you lose the lumbar as they order the basic interior. Does any one have any experience with this?? Thanks.

 

I don't know, but I wish I had ordered satalight Grey leather seats and was going to see if the covers can be ordered and fitted by the dealer.

 

Ask to see examples of their work, ask for samples of the leather they'll be using (you'll need to see that when selecting color anyway). If the quality of the workmanship and leather are both good and they'll offer to warranty it for the duration of the car's manufacturer's warranty it sounds like it could be a good way to go. The MINI leather you get from the factory isn't that great. I could easily see it being eclipsed by aftermarket for that price.

This is actually exactly what I intend to do myself if I buy another MINI - skip the factory leather and spend the money to have the seats redone by an upholstery shop. I just got some custom leather done for a set of Miata seats and it's MUCH higher quality stuff than the leather in my MINI. The Miata covers came from LeatherSeats.com, but I don't believe have a MINI pattern yet - someone would have to loan them a set of seats and/or upholstery to make a pattern off of.

Also, FWIW you can buy and add the lumbar supports for the MINI seats after the fact - there's a thread around here somewhere about it. IIRC they're not that expensive from the dealer and are pretty easy to install - would be virtually no effort to install them if the seats were already apart to be reupholstered.

 

Here's the lumbar thread. It is simple and inexpensive to add the lumbar parts:
https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...orts-seat.html