Is Supple Leather more fragile than the harder version?

I've seen several photos of 996's with the supple leather seats. Look like luxury Lexus type seats. My 944 has the hard-as-a-rock Recarros, and the leather is pretty much the way it was when it was new. Does the supple leather wear out, or wear faster? They look really plush, and I could use plush at this point! Unless that option is anti-sports car? I have to find this important stuff out so when I start looking, I know it all!

I had supple leather in my '99 Boxster. I don't think I would say that it "wears out" faster, but your body weight will basically "iron out" most of the ripples pretty quickly. You can keep it looking good for a while if you "fluff" your seats after every couple of drives. While I thought the supple leather looked nice when new, I would only go with the standard leather today. Standard leather is easy to clean and condition (I use Zaino products) and keep looking (and smelling) like new.

That's exactly what I was worried about! These cars are high maintenance enough - I don't wanna have to worry about fluffing the seats up!

I have supple leather....and at 125k on the car, thet look pretty good....not sure what 125k would look like on standard leather....I like the seats much more than the standard seats I had on my Boxster...more upkeep, maybe, but nicer....

seat condition has A LOT to do with the driver's weight.

Or, the Previous Owner's weight!

HEY! Just what are you trying to imply?

lol u know what is the best mod you can do, right?

Drop 50 pounds, right!?

stop drinking beer!!! ok i give up, thank god it's friday.

Surprising to most people, dispite living for 13 years in Germany I actually HATE beer . (a confession that I hope doesn't see me banned from the forum )

By hate, do you mean LOVE??? What torture it must have been, every October!

I really like the look of the Supple Leather much better than the standard leather. The perforated holes in the standard leather catch dirt and leather cleaner and, IMO, are actually more difficult to care for (my wife's MB has perf. leather). Also, I think the supple leather is more comfortable than the standard leather. Supple leather is on my list of MUST HAVE items on my next Porsche!

+1

I don't like the supple leather option...but it is mostly the look I don't like...I think the quality of both is equal....

soft leather is very fragile when your taking **** apart its so easy to damage , my bad day is having to pull a dash out of a car with soft leather

I guess to me a Porsche should have hard, racing type seats. Soft and supple isn't Porsche (IMHO).

The supple leather in my 90 looks like new with 45K miles.

bigmac-that is a nice 928 you got there- love the color... I have the supple leather in my 99 996 with 30k but I swear that they feel no different than my boxster did with the base seat. Only the back seats have that ruffled look already now- the fronts look like base seats for the most part anyway. Not sure I would spend the dough if I ordered it new.

just look at used cars with either option on ebay. u'll see supple leather has folds that look old where as regular seats look taught. i like regular seats better and they are fine for 2+ hr drives.

I don't know if supple leather is any less durable (I have supple but with only 5K on the car, I'm not a good judge), but I recall seeing big leather swatches at the Porsche dealership. There was no difference in thickness between regular and supple leather. By the way, the seat leather is quite a bit thicker than you'd think. It's like heavy canvas. According to the sales person, the difference is in the leather treatments which are applied to the leather. The regular leather has treatments which closes or seals the leather more than supple leather. As a seating material, it doesn't "breathe" as well. This treatment also tends to make the leather stiffer and more "vinyl" like. He said both should wear equally well, but supple leather was more likely to stretch over time. For what its worth. What I can tell you from personal experience is that supple leather on a 1987 928 S4 I had looked like crap after a few years. The leather had stretched so much that the seating areas had distorted from the original look and really took away from the appeal of the interior, and I'm not a heavy guy.

Interesting...why would you get supple leather again after the 928 experience - unless the car was perfect except for supple leather??

Because I suspected the design of the 928's seat... or rather the foam was a contributing factor. I don't have a photo, but if you search for it, you'll see that the softer leather seat actually had a different seat style in that car. It had these multiple rectangular foam pieces which formed the seating area, the stretching was in between these foam blocks. The 996 has a different design and probably won't show as much.

I remember seeing 928's with terrible looking seats...cracking, sagging, etc. I guess that must have been the supple leather gone wrong? Supple is very attractive to me, since I want a little more luxury than my bare bones feeling 944. But if the seat will wear or look different than the less-used passenger seat, I don't want supple!

So, just to clarify, I never actually had problems with the leather cracking. I suspect that's really a matter of sun exposure more than anything. I only had the car for 4 years, so I don't suspect serious issues would have developed.

We ordered our 2002 with supple leather and have had no problems. Can't say re. durability with standard leather as we've never had a Porsche with standard. We use Effax leather balsam on the interior - it's a saddle treatment and can be found at tack stores.