I have found the perfect cooper s for me right now all except for one problem: it has cloth seats. Though cloth is not bad I was hoping to have at least leatherette seats in my vehicle. Well I was wondering if anyone was familiar with reupholstery for automobiles and could give me a ballpark figure on how much you think it would cost to get my cloth seats reupholstered to leatherette. Thanks in advance...

 

Just a guess, but probably more expensive then buying new leatherette seats from the dealer or NAM market place.

 

ask ChrisMCS04 he "redid" his seats and i saw them in person, they look good

 

buying new seats from the dealer will cost THOUSANDS. the price is actually shocking. look at realoem for the part #'s and then pelicanparts for the pricing. it's insane!

NAM marketplace will get you better prices but, you may be limited in your choices.

reupholstery will cost some $ but, probably way less than the dealer. if you DIY even less. plus you can pick and choose what you want to use.

 

Or check out the Wet Okole seat covers. Much better than the leatherette and much cheaper.

 

Hi,

If you reupholstery the seat cloth to leather... wouldn't this affect the seat side airbags (ie: the airbags won't deploy when accident)?

 

The stitching in the seams (exact location of seam, thread used, and type/size of stitch) is precisely designed in relation to the expansion of a deployed airbag. Stick with OEM upholstery. Your cheapest bet might be to ask around at junk yards to source seats out of a wrecked MINI.

 

I'd get the http://www.wetokole.com/ seat covers. They are durable, they look great...and they are designed to work with the seat mounted airbags.

$250-300 for the front seats, keep the rear folded down.

 

Another company that you can use is Katzkin. They make leather seat covers that come already made and you have an upholstery guy put them on....or yourself if you know a little about it (have to steam them to fit). They are not cheap but they fit like factory......beautiful....we use them all the time.

Thanks,
Chris

 

For what's it worth, I have (black) leatherette covers and they are not good in hot weather places. I'd love to have cloth instead.

Maybe a trade? What seats are they? What color are your they? What year is the car?

My interior is black/piano black and my MINI is blue so they'd have to be mainly black.

 

I bought my 2005 MCS from a NAM member. It came with Space Cloth seats--not my first choice of seats, since I had leather in my 2003 MC prior. After a year of driving and 40,000 miles later, I actually found the cloth seats to be very comfortable and liked them more than I thought I would. However, the cloth seats seemed to diminish the value or quality of the interior for me. Whenever I would see an '05 with leather or leatherette interior, it just seemed so much better.

I ended up buying a full leatherette interior for around $750 (incl shipping) from an '06 here in the NAM marketplace.

Later on, I acquired a tartan red cloth/leather seat combo from another NAM member that matched the red/black interior scheme I was doing, however, these seats had neither heating elements (cold weather), nor the pressure sensor mats found on the '05s and higher since it came from an '04.

So I took both sets of seats to my upholsterer and asked him to take all the best parts from the leatherette seats and put them on the cloth/leather seats.

For $250/seat, they swapped airbags, plastic backs with the nets, pressure pads, seat heater elements which required new foam.

So in the end $500 for the swap + $750 for the leatherette seats + $600 for the cloth leather seats...not exactly the deal of the life time--but I finally got what I wanted--matching leather seats with lumbar support updated to 2006 specs. Eventually I'll probably have the leather and cloth replaced since the cloth is stained and I'd like to have a higher quality leather in place. They will match the patterns and I don't think will be an issue.

There is always a price for customization....lol.

Richard

 

One of our local dealerships buys cars w/ cloth or leatherette and then has a local full-custom leather installer reupholster the seats. They charge around $1500-1800 (not sure which... it's been a while)... your choice of colors and piping in real leather, all 4 seats.

 

What year is it? How many miles? What color? auto or 6-speed

 

Thanks for the help. I ended up just looking more and found another that came with more of the options I wanted. Glad I didnt have to go through the reupholstering thing.

 

Sounds interesting - what's the mileage and price? I'd personally be at least a bit concerned about getting an early one unless it had very low miles.

 

im getting my seats redone in black suede. i have leather now.

 

yeah i have tan interior and i wish it was blue : (