I tell you that: I am quite confused by now.

Never mind: if the material, I touch ( = seat on ) is leather, and if the looks of the interior is ok, and perhaps the dashboard lasts longer, I am happy.

;-)

Hermann

 

You paint a very romantic picture but I think you are blurring the lines between the Jaguar of old and the modern Jaguar. I did factory tours of Browns Lane too and watched in fascination as they demonstrated how they arranged the wooden templates on a hide to work out how to make best use of it so there was minimal wastage.

The next time I went the leather shop was shut and the seats manufacturing had been outsourced to Lear so they arrived shrink wrapped ready for installation on the line.

Sales brochures are just that. They are a marketing tool to entice you into buying a car. The description of the Extended Leather Pack omits the word surfaces in the brochure but it does appear in other sales material for the F Type:



The 2021 ordering guide even has this disclaimer in it:

*Leather seats/interiors and steering wheels (all models) may include some non-leather materials on certain surfaces.

And if you look at current listing from dealers they mention both Windsor leather and surfaces in the same sentence. The references to the options look like they they are being pulled from an internal system rather than typed by them:

"[300UT] Mars Red/Flame Red Stitch, Windsor Leather Seating Surfaces $1,635"

e.g. this one:
https://www.landroverfrisco.com/inve...85fv5mck70437/

My '07 XKR had the fake leather dashboard. To the untrained eye it looked real and as I had to get the leather dash in my '10 XKR repaired due to shrinkage I wish that was fake leather too.

I am not saying that Jaguar don't do full leather interiors but they do make it hard to understand exactly what you get for your money.

 

The 4.2 X150 brochures use the word 'facings'. Not sure if that is another word for 'surfaces' but the seats all have the same description, even the 'Luxury' ones.

This is from the 2009 brochure:




Even the Portfolio uses the word:

 

I just checked the backs of my 2014 XK Dynamic R with Super-sports seats (a £3k option on non Dynamics) and they are defo vinyl, if you can't tell the difference you've not been sniffing enough seats!

Does it actually matter, just enjoy the car!

 

A nice, sunny weekend, so I was driving, and looked closely at the interior:

Seat front is leather, as is the steering wheel rim. Thick and soft and smooth.

Dash board and sides and center console and interior of steering wheel are harder and have a pebble structure - so artificial.

As has been said before, I love the CAR and the engine and the open driving, and I am quite satisfied, if the non leather dashboard is less problematic in the long run.

Have fun, Hermann

 

Well, be glad you are driving a Jaguar. If you had chosen a Mercedes Benz you might well be sitting on Artico Leather, and you know what that is.

 

That website does not describe automotive leather, most of which is polyurethane coated.



There are two types of automotive leather, sealed (polyurethane coated) and unsealed (a.k.a. "aniline"). Before the mid-1980s, all automotive leather was unsealed and very porous and so we cleaned and nourished our leather seats with Connolly Hide Food to keep them supple. But after 1985, most leather manufacturers began to coat the top surface of their leather with a protective layer of polyurethane ("PU") to enhance durability. Think of that PU coating as like today's base coat/clear coat paint finish.

That PU coating reduced the porosity of the leather. "Old school" conditioners containing lanolin and other thick ingredients that worked great on unsealed leather sat on the surface of PU coated leather and left it smooth and shiny, but didn't sufficiently penetrate that coating and get absorbed into the leather. For this reason, most leather cleaners on the US market today are lanolin-free.

IMHO, the most effective leather conditioners today for use on PU coated leather are those that can penetrate that coating. Take your pick of the conditioners that are thin liquids. Thick cream conditioners might make your leather look shiny and smell good, but they won't really condition the leather since they can't penetrate the PU coating as well as the thin viscosity conditioners.

My 2009 XKR Portfolio convertible came from the factory with a 100ml spray bottle of leather cleaner and conditioner with the Jaguar logo. That bottle was affixed to the left side of the trunk. The label does not identify the manufacturer. That product is odorless, clear, and has a very thin viscosity.



There are many leather care products, and any thin-viscosity leather cleaner and conditioner will work. Just apply it regularly, every 3-4 months depending on how much sun exposure your car gets. And use a sunshade to protect your dashboard.

Obviously, I don't use it in my garage. I didn't take the car out because it was raining.

 

The fake stuff has become so good that, honestly, I'd prefer it on the non-seating surfaces of a car seat. More stain and moisture resistant, and will probably outlast the leather. And if someone is climbing into the passenger seat of your XK taking a long look at the side material, you (and your passenger) may have bigger issues to deal with...

 

I think this site answers all questions about leather, real, fake, PU, PU then and PU now.
https://www.leather-dictionary.com/i...Leather_colour

wj

 

Nothing outlast leather.
We have leather pieces from very very very old times...
Plastic will never ever last as long.You can nourish or rejuvenate it.The molecular texture will be changed through UV and oxygen action.It wont last well although it's not biodegradable.

But then there's leather and leather.
Having work in shoes industry, fashion and interior design I can tell you a good leather well cared about can last forever.
Yes it will age, yes it will mark... but we call this a patina and it's extremly sought after,
An Aston DB5 with original leather worth clearly more than with a redone one. Same goes for Louis XVI dining chairs or Renaissance jewel gaskets.
And as a calceophile , i can tell you nothing is more pretty than a good pair of 25 years old shoes well cared about with a deep patina. Asks Charles 3rd about it.

Most of cars leather now are cheap quality leather.They are coming from the second layer of leather once a hide is recut in the thickness. That second layer looks like suede ,it's just made of dermis and to give it back a silky leather appearence, it's "printed" vetween hot metal rolls with several pattern (flat, grain, small grain, exotic grain whatsoever) and protected with nothing else than a synthetic finish . this is 90% of the current "leather" stuff you get (cheap living room, ikeas stuff, cars, sneakers, industrially made shoes ..)
It will never age well aesthetically but can still stay strong structurally if you nourish the material in depth.

then there's what's called "pleine fleur"in french( "full grain" in english, which doesn't relate to any grain texture in fact, so the english term is confusing).It's the top layer of the hide. The epidermis. The skin you see on your arms.
To be pretty, a great leather require a great health animal as any mark will be sightable. The full grain leather is not rectified as is the previous one. Sometime the texture is soft (cow, goat) sometime it's grainy (young bull) sometime it's wrinckled (elephant, shark) It's dyed,tanned, nourrished...that's all. With age and care it will acquire a unique patina which will give depth to the leather colour and texture.
This only real leather (in fact) is more fragile as is your skin more fragile than your flesh.
You find such leather only in high luxury cars...and that's rarer and rarer as consumers are more and more ignorant (let's face it) on real bench made shoes ( Crocket&jones, Corthay,Loob,Berlutti..)and luxury goods (Hermes bags and not Vuitton cheap stuff).

In the XK in Europe, the standard stuff was "leather". Which meant sitting and back+back pockets+door panels were rectified leather .the rest being plastic leather imitation.
The optional "sport" finish was full grain leather everywhere. Dashboard,full seats,dor cards and panels.It marks easier for sure...but should age very well as long as you give it care like proper real caw foot oil every year+ nourishing milk once a month.
These were the only 2 finishes available here.

Most problems with leather comes from an ignorance of how it's done, where it's from and how to care about it.
Uvs might act on the colour like it does on your skin or on woods but then you can recolour it.It can dry but then can be "refilled" with oils. You can bring back a 60 years old totally dried car leather to life by massaging it with mink oil then nourishing it with caw foot oil once every 3 days, doing it few weeks and it will get back to life, flexibility and smoothness.
Leather is breathable. Plastic is not. Porous plastic will never be durable by nature. So real full grain leather is allways better than any kind of plastic, whatever marketing people are trying to teach you.

 

Don't you step on my blue suede shoes.

 

Ok Elvis

 

Then you would probably like the “ Artico leather” in a Mercedes.