I have a 97 Z3 Roadster. It has the original tan (ugly IMHO) leather interior, which consists of seats and door inserts only, the rest is all black. The seats show lots of wear, cracks, scratches, etc... and the drivers has a small hole or tear in the back of the bottom cover. I haven't found many options to redoing the seats. Autoleathers.com will not provide new covers as I called them and they said they only had patterns to replace a stock fabric cover with new leather. I went to a local, good upholstery guy and he gave me two options. He could redo the interior with leather himself, which would be about $4000 or he could get replacement covers from an aftermarket company that specializes in BMW. Going that route would cost me right at $2000 which includes new seat covers, new leather to redo door inserts and shift boots and his labor...

My question is...is $2000 too much to do this??? It sounds like a lot to me and my wallet freaks out everytime I think of it!!!

You'll bring the cost way down if the leather can be restored rather than replaced. If you're a DIYer, you should try Leatherique crack filler and dye. You might even be able to dye the tan parts black so everything matches.

http://www.leatherique.com/

Here's pics of the hole - nickel is for reference to size...

Can Leatherique crack filler fill something of this size???
Also, using their dye, could I dye these seats red with no issues?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v637/lchandle/42257bb6.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v637/lchandle/38ad5603.jpg

I recommend that you contact George Pavlisko at Leatherique. He should be able to answer your questions.

if the leatherique thing doesn't work out, you could probably just buy new seats for likely half of that $2000....check ebay. Then you could leatherique the door inserts to match the seats....just my 2 cents.

From the looks of it, you would have to remove the leather and glue a piece of canvas or leather underneith that area then use leatherique's crack filler to create a seamless repair, then dye the entire piece. You're probally looking at about $200-$300 in materials and the better part of a weekend to do it.

that leatherique stuff doesnt work, it looks nice if you plan to sell the car, but the starts craxking up. 4000 ???? damn dude, i got a quote from a local shop to do my vert front and rears for 650 for real leather. not a kit, but a tear down, copy sew nice $hit. he said 550 id leather seating surface and vinyl on non touching surfaces

Half of that looks like regular wear - you can get it looking nice again by taking it to a restoration place - go talk to some of them in your area, shouldnt be too expensive - i had all my seats done for 200nzd which is like 160US. Basically they sandblast off the coating on seats, redye em and recoat em..The hole section would need replacing methinks.