NC leather care question

  1. My model of MX-5 is: NC3.5 sport tech
  2. I’m based near: London
  3. I’m looking for technical help or recommendations on:

I bought some autoglym leather cleaner and balm for my NC, but I’m not entirely sure about which parts are actually leather.

As far as I can tell, the front parts of the seats are leather and the steering wheel is leather.

But how about the door cards and the arm rest? I’m pretty sure that the rear part and rear sides of the seats are not leather either.

Does anyone know?

put a drop of water on the “Leather” if it soaks in it’s leather, if not it’s plastic or plastic coated leather. Pretty sure the seats are coated leather

Only the facias of the seats are leather, the bit that you sit on. The steering wheel is also leather, but don’t polish that, and the door inserts are leather too.

Cheers, do you know if the arm rest is leather too?

But is it film coated leather?

I’ve read about that, the consensus seems to be that most automotive leather will still behave like leather and benefit from the balm.

This is the original spec, leather is only referenced for seats, gear knob, handbrake and steering wheel.

Just realised that yours is a later car but the spec sheet is the same.

Interesting, what year is that from? maybe it changed with later models, I doubt that the shift knob on mine is leather, and the gaiter and hand brake sleeve are definitely not leather on mine, just cheap vinyl. I’ll probably swap them out soon.

That was from a 2005 brochure, this one is dated April 2009.

So after doing some research and examining the seats, in my non-expert opinion:

According to youtube, leather wrinkles when you press it, and the panels identified with the green dots below did, it’s hard to tell with the yellow dot ones because of how small they are.

In any case, the leather cleaner didn’t hurt any of them and they all looked better afterwards.

Also looking at the Kuro/25th anniversary editions, those are the panels that are replaced, which makes me suspect that those are the leather ones. Here is an example:

On my car, 2010 Sport Tech:

  • Green: leather
  • Yellow: not sure
  • Red: not leather (no behind the seats shots, but I doubt that those pieces are leather).

Here is the finished result, minus the dots, I feel it made a difference, specially on the steering wheel which was very shiny before. The car also smells like new leather afterwards, which is a nice bonus. I let the balm sit for 24 hours before wiping them down, but not much excess was left in any case:

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