BigVIPness

So after seeing pics of the VIP GS with saddle interior its for sure going to be added to my list of mods. However, when I tried to search online for more information it was hard to find anything relevant.

Has anyone here installed a saddle interior in their car? Do I buy the leather at a specialty store then have my interior guy cut it to the pattern of the seats and doors and install it? Does anyone know what the process is called of embossing a design or text into the leather.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

This is what i'm talking about:

Stage3

iTrader: (3)

I'm not too sure, but I would hope that the upholstery shop would be able to get their hands on that leather. I like the look!

MSMLexIS

Maybe you can try to get the factory saddle interior for the GS it was offered in the 2003 sportdesign.

LexLaw

Yes I vaguely recall now that you mention it.

dsnowgs4

I can vouch for that. I just saw a 2nd gen GS300 with the saddle leather interior.. It kinda freaked me out.

I thought It looked pretty good. But there cant be too many versions of that car out there.

Lil4X

It would be interesting to see what a good saddle shop could do with a bit of hand tooling to reproduce the desired design in a single panel. That panel would probably have to be thicker than most of the seating surface to take deep tooling, but it could be sewn high into the center of the backrest, or on the headrest where it wouldn't poke you. That would be a good question for a fine leatherworker - and a challenge for the serious amateur.

It looks like most of these designs are embroidered. You might check your local yellow pages for a shop that does shirts and hats. Many are franchise operations that use a computer to drive an automated embroidery machine - much like a NC mill. Many can simply follow a scanned image or original art. Then have that panel sewn into the others that make up the seat back.

Just as there are many colors available today for saddles, you might shop around a bit before you select the "Basketball Orange" (Castano Brown). While it does resemble a traditional finely oiled old saddle, it may not match up with the rest of the interior (as is the case in some of the Ford F-series pickups with the "King Ranch" option).

flipside909

Saddle interior isn't my favorite but it is different. Aside from the 03 GS Sport Design, it was an available interior for select colors on the current Gen 3.5 LS430.

flipside909

That's going to be way too expensive. It would be cost effective to get an upholstery shop to find saddle colored leather and reskin the seats.

RX_330

I'm not too fond of that particular interior. The color is OK, but the texture....Meh. I like perforated leather seats, and if that color were a little lighter, and less shiny.

Gojirra99

The saddle leather somehow always comes out too orange & shiny in pics, it always look a lot better in person, I have yet to see a good pic that accurately depicts it.