Regretting not getting leather

Yes
About Clazzio Seat Covers

 

The Prius factory leather is not leather. It is imitation leather which is a nice way of saying Vinyl Seats. It does have seat heater and Lumbar support. My last car was a 325i BMW and I had the upgraded luxury package and sport package. The quality leather is unbelievable and the sport seat had 18 way adjustments with multiple lumbar supports and memory for setings.

Just saying that trading in your car to get imitation leather is probably not that good of an idea. The Toyota seats are just not that comfortable for long drives.

I would look at the after market stuff, and try and get some good cushions added.

Prius is a great car and enjoy it, but the seats are not good in my humble opinion.
Sounds like you know that already.

Let us know how it works out

 

I hear ya. Cloth seats don't make a lot of sense to me afterall. Until they invent seats you can put in the washing machine, why buy cloth? I mean really, of you wipe, wipe some spill or chocolate, is it going to get it clean.... no. If you use an upholstery cleaner, I'll wager you end up with stain rings.

My tactic has been to use low cost cloth seat covers to protect the OEM fabric. I plan to never sit on the OEM fabric, except the rear is still uncovered and once in a blue I have passengers back.

The Softex does not allow me to scootch in the seat like good leather seats. Softex grabs onto clothing as much as cloth. I like to be able to scootch the butt a bit for comfort.

Your options

1) Cover them with the most popular for the Prius which is Clazzio covers. One model has leather inserts. Little over $500 for front and rear setup

2) Katzkin leather gets a lot of mentions as good stuff to replace the cloth. I would feel bad about ditching the cloth as I don't know if it would end up on anyone elses car. What a waste if it got tossed. My fabric is in great shape. Must be well over $1k, maybe about $1,500 installed. Probably best to get seat heaters with it.

Then you may want to deal with getting better feel on the steering wheel. Brack, that rough plastic stinks. Some buying aftermarket steering wheels imported from Japan.

 

How about your steeing wheel? Are you getting tired of the sandpaper-like texture? One way is to cover it with Wheelskins which I did last weekend. Better but more expensive way is to replace it with aftermarket like 'Silk Blaze' or 'Luna Intl / Rakuten' imported from Japan if recall.

 

Clazzio has videos showing airbag deployment with its seat covers on.

Even the El cheapos in AutoZone like 'auto innovations' (sp?) are saying their side seams allow airbag deployment.

My $40 front pair say the seams breakaway if the seam is over the airbag slit in side of seat. Feel side of seat to find the slit where airbag deploys. It's not very wide, less than 2" I believe.

 

Just keep in mind if you were to go through all this, they'll still be Prius seats which are alright, but they don't stand up to the Camry and Accord chairs I've tried out.

Lot of people are pretty happy with Clazzio covers. One aspect I might not like about Clazzios is the advertised 1/2" of foam in the seating area. Thicker covers make the seat a little bit smaller since seatback pushes butt forward. For longs legs like mine, not ideal. I'll stick with my cheapo autozone specials.

 

You could do the total ghetto route and spend a few bucks on foam, fabric, elastic and sew away like I did

 

Called a local shop and they quoted full katskinz minus steering wheel starting @ $1450 installed. This is for basic leathers and would go up as u choose more features. So try another place

 

Maybe it's me but at $1,500 I'd live with the cloth seats and get a Omega watch. Omega watches are hand made and appreciate in value. Many are handed down from father to son.

The Prius seats will be in the junk yard in a decade, the watch will still be ticking.

 

Yes, in fact it came with two center console covers for some reason. Maybe a slip up in packaging but I do have an extra black one sitting in my PIP storage despite not having the 2012 Three anymore. lol

The fit is not perfect but I liked it better than the cloth on the console. The cloth is very thin and wears/stains easily.

 

It might void the warranty on things like the seat adjuster or the passenger presence switch for the airbag but nothing else.

 

Does Angie's list have that as a category?

 

Maybe I'm side with caution, but a Prius is a small car, paying $1,500 for leather seats, and the air bag may or may not work to me seems to me the perfect argument to keep the Cloth Seats.

 

I use google maps. No reviews but I call for pricing. If I like their pricing then I'll pay em a visit and check out the work they've done either by looking at one of their cars or photos.
I've found some shops that have quoted $1,200 installed but that is probably the basic option, and I don't know about their work quality. There's plenty of shops just gotta keep searching.

 

Which is why I'm still leaning towards clazzios. But some aftermarket leathers look so much better than factory cloth and factory softex that it all depends.

 

unfortunately I did not have my Prius long enough to evaluate long term wear of the "leather" in the 2010 but did have micro fiber in LEAF/ older Prius and they did do very well for stain cleanup. I was able to easily clean marker stains from the rear seat in the LEAF to the point where there is no trace of it at all. i used dollar store cleaner and it was gone in two easy applications

but the Toyota leather struck me as thin and I had doubts of its longevity. I don't know. I don't have a lot of experience with leather (would never get it in southern areas of the country and not sure I can understand anyone who would) so could be way off base here