I'm about 45 days from taking the RPU to the upholstery shop and I need some input on whether to use leather or vinyl. Color is an important factor cuz the car will be red and I need to match the paint as close as humanly possible to the interior. IMHO nothing looks worse than mismatched red paint & upholstery. I plan on buying the material first and then having the paint mixed to match. So yous guys that have open cars please advise me on which way to go, cow or oil.
First of all, red and red will not look all that good IMHO. Red car and red interior will be too much of the same color and everything will blend together with no contrast at all. One big blob of red. I think that a tan or brown interior goes much better with a red exterior. As for material, leather has a really nice and unique feel but can be difficult to care for in an open car. I went with vinyl for that reason.
Hey, I agree with the text above....you DON"T want the exterior match the interior....you kneed to have contrast for it to look good. Even have some contrast on the interior colors.....
Leather is a lot more money, a lot of waste as they can't use all of each hide. And it's harder to work with.
Leather is the cl***ic choice for open cars if you can afford it. If not there are several good brands of vinyl made for boats that are durable enough for your purpose. The cost of leather is about 3 times vinyl and goes up from there.
I hunted down my own. It was a good hunt to of stalking and waiting for just the right hide. I skinned that couch on the curb.
Quite a dilemma to have if the leather fits in the budget. As much as I like read I wouldn't want all red though. I get a marine upholstery trade magazine that comes to my business and there are a lot of serious high quality marine vinyl materials out there. It stands up not only to the moisture you expect but the sunlight.
I bought 3 nice hides on eBay for mine and it was really good quality. A while later I read an article on here where a guy collected a few old couches off Craig's list that people were giving away and used the leather for his car. I know what I'm doing the next time I do one!
I have found that the vinyl got much hotter in the sun than the leather , but the leather did need dressing to keep supple.
It takes approx 17 square feet of leather to convert to a yard of vinyl (or fabric). Meaning that if you find leather for $6.00 a square foot (and that is cheap), it converts to about $102.00 per yard. A yard of vinyl is substantially less. So, yes, 4-5 times more money for leather. And yes, leather will crack and age in the sun like only leather will. I'll take leather on an earlier period build and vinyl on a 60' s theme
A quick search of Dallas Craigslist turned up 21 free leather couches in the last 44 days. That's one every other day. Some of them looked perfect and new. Most had good leather on the back but worn leather on the seat. There is supposed to be a fake leather that looks and feels like the real thing but doesn't have the maintenance or longevity issues. Maybe someone else can remember it's name. I'll bet an upholsterer would know. I had thought about sewing a bunch of jeans together in random hodge-podge manner for a t-bucket seat. Guy's jeans on the driver's side and girl's for the p***enger's. Or maybe jeans for the seat bottoms and shirts for the back. It'd probably be smarter to make a seat cover so that when the novelty wore off I could stash it. I've seen some red corvettes with red interiors at some car shows. I thought they looked good. I have to agree with you about matching the interior and exterior colors, though. I don't think they would have looked as good if they were very different. To that end, you may want to think about something that doesn't fade. I think you could get away with a few different tints or red, so long as the majority of the interior matched the exterior, such as if the seats were a little different but the rest of the interior matched, especially if something else in the interior matched the seats, like a strip of trim, a line, or the dash, for instance, to tie the colors together.
Thanks! Oops. Sorry. I missed that. In that case, I don't think it is quite as important to get a perfect match of reds. However, since it is important to you, you may be disappointed when the leather starts to fade. It may make more sense for you to go with something that doesn't change its tint in the sun, since you are going to so much trouble to make it match exactly.
You can buy excellent leather if you watch for it. I bought mine from an add in Hemings, this guy bought last years leather from personal jet factories in the Whichita KS area
From experience with a white interior in a convert I'd think twice before using it a roadster. I agree that it's a sharp color combo you have figured I'm just thinking of the never ending job of trying to keep the white clean. My vote would be to use leather.
Did Sunbrella with a Mexican blanket pattern then went to distressed leather that shrunk and replaced that with a quality Naugahyde that looked like an old bomber jacket. Just a side note; I was ready to sell this car as it was so uncomfortable. Trimmer rebuilt the bottom cushion with webbing on a cut out in the 3/4" marine ply and made a custom lumbar support.
Where abouts in SoCal are you located? If you are at all close to the Mexican border and Tijuana is within reach, you might want to think about driving down there and looking up one of the shops that sell leather to the locals. Although I am located in upstate NY, I did just that several years back when we were doing the upholstery on our '33 Buick 90 series Victoria. Reuben Gold, the guy we bought the leather from, was super to deal with. His shop was jam packed with hides in every color you could think of. And it was all vat-dyed, which is VERY important if you want durability and color consistancy. His prices were absolutely the best I could find anywhere. Which turned out to be a real shocker because the leather hides he sold me in Tijuana came from a leather supplier in Gloversville, NY! How's that for weird? Anyway, I was super satisfied with the leather we purchased, both in price and quality. Give it a thought. Good luck.
'60 style is what I'm shooting for and I don't remember anybody using leather then. It seems like most are now. I can envision the white yellowing and the red fading. What I can say is it's white with red inserts for sure.
Maybe I will be the spoiler on this thread, for the crowd I have always hung with leather was always a little too high end. For us original interior was what happened while we were raising money then it was normally Naugahyde that was the norm. Of course you have to kill a bunch of these little ******s to upholster the car and I still think it is wasteful to just keep the skin and not utilize the meat.
I've played with hot rods and sailboats most of my life and Vinyl holds up better in the Texas Sun. As far as color I like red roadsters but with a tan or cream color for the interior. If you do go with leather try to get the perforated stuff so it can breathe, much cooler.
I'm concerned that posts like this will draw attention to the people at PETA and the Feds causing Naguas to be put on the endangered species list!
All this talk of leather and of leather couches has prompted me to again post information on leather quality. The leather on most furniture is NOT good quality leather and will not stand up to automotive upholstery use for very long. The majority of the leather furniture sold is made offshore and there is a good reason why the couches are advertised as free many times. They just aren't worth much. The leather in most furniture chain couches made offshore is a cheap thin kind of leather called bonded leather. Real good quality leather is only used by a few manufacturers and is on expensive high end furniture. Another thing that you might get with your "free" couch could be all the bedbugs you can carry.
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