Cow-a-bunga
Lee Nian Tjoe
Wednesday, 13th May 2009 @ 01:25:58 AM
Leather seats are a mystery to me and I'm not alone. Jerry Seinfeld, the comedian and owner of the last air-cooled Porsche 911 to be made, once wondered on stage why leather isn't waterproof as a jacket but the cows in the field seems perfectly okay wearing the thing as their skin.
Besides the hassle of having to apply stuff to keep the dang hide moisturised, I also cannot / refuse to understand why car buyers place so much esteem for leather upholstery over fabric. Fabric seats are the mark of a cheap car, it seems.
It doesn't matter that the upholstery is done in ex-factory, by a guy with coarse hands stripping the seats of whatever material the carmaker has given to put on the shiny stuff. If you are really in the money, you may even promise you a kind of hide from a cow named Connolly. (FYI: Connolly Leather has long ceased operations and the cows have been freed).
Some claims that they want leather in their car because leather is easier to maintain, save for an occasional rub of conditioner.
Here's news for you mister: leather upholstery – whether it be factory standard or done locally – doesn't necessary mean that the entire chair is clad in moo-moo. Often, only the bits that your backside come in contact with are dressed in Daisy's face and the rest of it is a synthetic material made to look like leather. It's not just to cut cost but the man made stuff is simply more hardwearing.
And here's another thing, leather and the phony variety typically traps more heat than the porous fabric.
This leads to another thing about cars and car buyers today that I don't understand, which is the need to put on dark, gangster-style window tint… to keep the cabin cool, you say. Well, it doesn't have to be literally opaque to cut off the heat and who are you are hiding from anyway?
That's a rant for another day.