gravedgr

Leather seats says "sports car". Full leather says "luxury".

zanwar

Alcantara is there to keep a solid grip on your backside. I wish I had some in my sport bucket seats.

How does that natural leather hold up to denim?

beowulf

I have natural leather in my 40th Anniv. and denim has not been a problem with seat wear;
although I only wear Agave jeans which are about as soft as microfiber cloths LOL.....

I'm also getting Natural Leather in my GTS : )

Mike in CA

So leather seats are sporty, but adding leather on the doors and dash (basically what constitutes "full leather" in the Porsche option world) goes over the line into "luxury". And having a man made material instead of leather on the doors and dash keeps things sporty. OK, but seems like a rather narrow perspective to me.

Guess I should have gone with the vinyl instead of full leather. Would have saved some money, and my interior wouldn't look so d@mn luxurious!

zanwar

That harness is luxurious, bordering on opulent!

brt3

Decadent even...

Hell, there's probably no way I can justify half of the items on my options list -- except that it was just stuff that I wanted. Maybe the best example of this is PDK. The historical definition of "sports car" meant a manual. However, that distinction has been blurred, since many modern race cars use manumatics. I'd rather shift myself -- more feedback from the car and more satisfying when I get it right -- but ordered the PDK because of knee issues. I ordered adaptive sports seats, mainly because I want my wife to be comfy. Same with the Nav and BOSE; they make the car more usable in the real world. I want a car I can enjoy on the track, but I also want something I can jump into anytime and drive down the coast for 4 hours without feeling hammered.

I guess we each have slightly different priorities which dictate our options lists. Part of this is, unfortunately, dictated by age. I'm only 50, but I find myself growing less tolerant of things I would have tolerated or endured 20 years ago.

Of course, I also have more disposable income than I did twenty years back, so I'm more likely to be attracted by the pretty, shiny bits I might have laughed at 20 years back. Keyless entry comes to mind...

gravedgr

Now you've got it!

ADias

I no longer argue nonsense. As you said, leather lined sports cars interiors have been around forever. Deriding it as 'luxury' is just a way to justify $10k savings (the true cost of a proper leather interior). There are other options which are not part and parcel of a sports car, but leather is not one of them.

Re fake alcantara and backside grip... I have no grip issues on my leather sports seats and I'm sure Mike has even less on his excellent buckets.

zanwar

I have the same folding sport bucket seats in my car. I don't run with harnesses and that's the problem. Under heavy braking I slide forwards on the seat. Maybe I should pull out the seat pads and stitch some velcro to my trousers.

equiraptor

I almost universally slide in OEM seats. Almost because I rarely, if ever, slide in the alcantara lined seats. I'm female and rather thin, but I drive hard. I push the car's cornering limits on track. Even the alcantara can't hold me in the higher G corners, but it is an improvement over leather. It does make a difference, at least for those of us skinny enough to notice.

Harnesses would be the best solution, but that's not always an option.

ADias

I'll give you that - if your car is primarily for track use, get alcantara or cloth - but then I expect a sparsely specced car w/o Bose/electric seats/auto-dimming mirrors/NAV. For me, though, I take leather any day.

equiraptor

If the car's primarily for track use, it should have harnesses.

If the car is dual purpose, track and street, alcantara can make sense with bose, nav, etc., etc. There's no harm in that, if the car meets the owner's needs.

zanwar

My (now) track car has full leather, Bose, nav, XM, dimming mirrors, xenons and a sliding glass roof. Seriously, there are no rules. If I was starting from scratch I would probably choose a GT3, but you go to the track with what you have. There are guys tracking Lamborghinis with quilted leather interiors

Getting back on topic it would be nice if they offered some modern textiles as interior options. Your full leather interior is very well executed but there are some excellent synthetics out there now, Alcantara being one of them. The Sport Classic interior was a step in the right direction, something different.

gravedgr

Take your heathen fabrics and burn them at the altar of leather, and maybe you'll be forgiven.

All joking aside (and my previous comments were all jokes, of course), I honestly don't care what's on the doors or dash. If leather were reasonably priced there, I might consider it - but its Porsche, so of course its not, and I don't. The idea that someone other than the owner could determine what is right, good, or appropriate is laughable at best, however.

At least I was pleased to see the leather Porsche uses has a texture/grain that I can live with. I have been really disappointed with some of the leathers BMW and MB have used. Not being a connoisseur, I'm sure they were good quality, but I just didn't like them - they often felt inferior to what you get in a basic Lexus.

zanwar

I agree with your opinion of current BMW/MB interiors. I tested a M5 earlier this year, and it just didn't have the appearance of a 100k car, no matter how impressively it drove.

I would think twice about ordering your GTS without the extra leather appointments. My 911 came with full leather and the stitching on the edge of the dash creates a strong visual break that improves the lines quite a bit. That's the part of the interior that you'll be looking at the most so I'd say it's worth the extra cash.