Can anyone recommend a product to clean and
protect my cream leather seats. They are the air
Cooling type if it makes a difference? Just starting
to wear slightly.
Regards

Hi Gary,

I use Gliptone on mine. Great product and it restores that fresh leather pong!

http://www.liquidleather.com/

 SDV8 AB MY 2019
SDV8 VSE MY 2015 - Gone
5.0 S/C AB MY 2010 - Gone
4.2 S/C VSE MY 2006 - Gone

+1 for the Gliptone sir

i use meguiars gold class leather and vinyl cleaner for cleaning my seats.
nice product, brings out the dirt from the seats.
after cleaning they also have a special leather conditioner that is also really nice!
you can order them on amazon cheaper than buying it in store!

+3 for gliptone.

Autoglym leather shampoo is very good for cleaning them, but Gliptone conditioner for conditioning them.

Actually any old saddle soap will clean them, the gliptone and autoglym cleaners are both just liquid saddle soap.

Gliptone conditioner is the only one i've ever used that actually got rid of creases and wrinkles in leather.

It's better to avoid anything that claims to be an all in one cleaner and conditioner though, as they're seldom good at both. They risk taking the dirt into the leather's pores. I mean you wouldn't wash your hands with hand cream would you?

Saddle soap and fatty acid/wax emulsion lotions and potions like Gliptone are what you don't want to use on modern leather which is in good condition. All modern automotive leather (with very few exceptions) is coated with a layer of polymer, all it needs is cleaning and moisture levels maintaining. You cannot "feed" it.

Oils and chemicals cannot penetrate the undamaged coating but can damage it, leading to eventual degradation and dehydration, even if there is an initial superficial improvement in look and feel.

But after a few years the surface gets worn anyway especially on seats, treating it with a decent hide food does restore the leather to a good condition.

A lot of steering wheels are PVC coated though, and yeah you're right putting a hide food on PVC coated leather is a waste of time, it just makes it greasy.

Decent quality car leather from what i've seen is seldom coated in plastic (aka polymer), the leather seats you get in low end mass production cars does have a very much plastic feel to it, but on something like a Jaguar or a Rolls-Royce the leather appears quite different. Land Rover themselves sell a branded leather cleaner and moisturiser kit.
http://www.landrover-store.co.uk/product/L...t_LR023889

If you were to wear away the coating of the very thin leather found in say Vauxhall Corsa seats, i think you're probably right, the leather underneath is so thin it would probably just fall to bits.

It depends what you mean by modern, but the leather in my 16 year old Rover mini is still perfect, and had been fed every 6 months or so with Gliptone, even the steering wheel shows no wear after 96'000 miles.

Used Meguiars Gold Class leather cleaner and conditioner, 5 mins on drivers seat and noticeably different

Zirconblue wrote:

Decent quality car leather from what i've seen is seldom coated in plastic (aka polymer), the leather seats you get in low end mass production cars does have a very much plastic feel to it, but on something like a Jaguar or a Rolls-Royce the leather appears quite different

Well that's what i was trying to research but couldn't find anything.

Is there perhaps a difference between maintaining sound leather and refreshing tired Leather? Leather being a natural material and subject to wear is always going to need refreshing 'eventually'.

Gliptone and from the pics Meguiars definitely restore worn leather, the photos above show it clearly helps.

Think of it this way sir

Have you ever seen a parchment, aspen, jet, sand, ivory or red cow? Then the leather is painted that colour! What your trying to maintain/clean is the painted finish sir...

So, go for a product thats recommended to clean/maintain auto seats (as they are all painted leather)

It's not though it's dyed, much the same way a red cotton t-shirt is dyed red not painted;

"Aniline leather is a type of leather dyed exclusively with soluble dyes without covering the surface with a topcoat paint or insoluble pigments."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aniline_leather

You can however get leather 'paints' for repairing scuffs or recolouring leather.

Have you ever seen a parchment, aspen, jet, sand, ivory or red cow?

In truth yes, Cow's do have various colours of hair, black, beige, white, reddish - although i must admit i've never seen a green one.

Zirconblue wrote:

It's not though it's dyed, much the same way a red cotton t-shirt is dyed red not painted;

"Aniline leather is a type of leather dyed exclusively with soluble dyes without covering the surface with a topcoat paint or insoluble pigments."