I'm a huge fan of the leatherette, have it both of our MINIs, but it does crack. My 02 driver's seat lower has a crack about 3" long on the left seat bottom/hip support. Then again I have 74,000 miles on that one also, so some wear and tear is bound to happen. I do like the fact that the seat bottom doesn't deform and sag like the leather seems to.

 

I ordered space grey cloth. There was a oops and the car arrived with the leatherette. They swapped the seats for me a week later. So I had both.

My preference is for the cloth.

1. The leatherette was a firmer seat, so much so that I felt the exhaust drone in my butt on long highway drives. A butt massage is not my cup of tea thanks. It became a bit annoying. Once the cloth seats were in it was gone.

2. The seat heaters in leatherette took longer to come up to temp, and I usually overshot the point where I wanted to turn them down. Took a while to heat up and a while to drop down to 'low'. Cloth ones seem easier to control.

Just matter of taste but I did have both and that's how I felt 'bout em.

 

I went last week and took one last look before the order goes in, and I decided to go with the cloth. My M3 has Nappa leather, which is a little better grade than the 3 series/Mini stuff and it's holding up fine at 46K miles. I liked the Panther Black leather I saw in a demo, but I just don't want to pay for it. I've had previous cars with nice cloth upholstery and my personal preference in this case was for the cloth. I had an X3 loaner with leatherette last week, it feels good, but the faux leather look was kind of overwrought.

 

You won't be dissappointed... The cloth is very comfy and looks great.. I tried the leatherette in the demo and did not like it... Personal preference to many... but I found the leaterette too slippery on my test drive... and I wasn't pushing it too bad either....