I love skipping out of work early....

Ripsnort said:

As the neighbor laboriously works on his yard (which I did this past week end) I took the opportunity of a 3rd coat of wax on my wheels this afternoon...don't ya just love spring!

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Well, yeah...if it ever would get here. 48 and raining, at least it's washing all the road salt away.

Rip, why are your pics such high contrast? At least on my monitor, they have an unnatural quality to them.

SONET said:

Hey Rip is your interior black leather or leatherette? I'm looking at changing my color to black/black 'ette (from silver/gray). I haven't been in a leatherette car yet though, going back to the lot tomorrow to look.

Your car looks good as always...

--SONET

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Wh, Wh, What???? You'd switch from this??? :yikes:



Don't forget ease of care. Even the ever ambitious Rip mentioned switching to a lighter color car on the next go around.

Johnlew: Nice pic.

Yeah, I am afraid that I'm going to have to switch my color combo. I will be leasing, and the payment with this color combo is just outside my budget for this car. By changing the color and going from leather to leatherette, it will take around $2k off the price. Coupled with a few other option changes, I'm hoping it will fit into my budget.

I have always wanted a black car (yes I know I'm insane), but I wanted Titanium Silver because I think it looks awesome on the 330ci, and I knew I wouldn't have to clean it every day. And I love the gray leather, it looks so airy and elegant. But that will have to wait for when I get my M.... I just can't see spending $670/mo on this car.

As an aside, anyone know the residual on an M3 coupe, 3yr/12K? I would be willing to pay $670/mo for one of those. {grin}

--SONET

John...:dunno: , its a straight upload to my homepage from the camera. The Camera is a digicamcorder, with "still" capability, but only at 640 res.

SONET: Yes Black leatherette here, and couldn't be more pleased. I haven't had a passenger yet that didn't say "Oh man, you got leather! Very nice!" I might add, two different dealers talked me out of buying leather, they said the leather in the 3-series was of not worth the "quality vs cost" comparison once compared to other leather interiors on the market, and one actually had a 3-series for his wife with leather, 3 years old, and mentioned that the leather didn't hold up well (who knows how often he cared for it though)... :dunno:

Thanks for the info Rip. I went to a dealer today and looked at the leatherette. I first saw the sand on a couple 325i's (sedans). I was totally turned off. But I insisted to see it in the black as well. I actually liked the leatherette better in black than I liked genuine black leather!

The part I was concerned about with the sand was that it was stretched tight, and you could see all the seams (the horizontal seams in the middle of the seats). In the black, there was a little extra material used like they do with the leather, and the seams weren't really exposed as much.

Rip, I know this sounds lame but what do the seams look like on your car? I'm wondering if the black I saw was just a fluke. I hate to ask you this, but if you could post a couple close-up pics of the front and back seats that would be really helpful!

Thanks

--SONET

Will do, sending myself a reminder home now when I get there...btw, when I was looking at various models, I could DEFINATELY tell the leatherette in the Sand color, but the black interiors, the salesperson had to tell me! Granted, I've never owned a leather-interior car, so I could chalk it off to being naive.

Re: Re: I love skipping out of work early....

johnlew said:

Rip, why are your pics such high contrast? At least on my monitor, they have an unnatural quality to them.

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I'm pretty sure the high contrast is from the glare off of Rips's bald head!

Re: Re: Re: I love skipping out of work early....

Mike 325xi said:

I'm pretty sure the high contrast is from the glare off of Rips's bald head!

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Could have been my manly hair-less chest too! I had my shirt off yesterday!

Re: Re: Re: Re: I love skipping out of work early....

Ripsnort said:

Could have been my manly hair-less chest too! I had my shirt off yesterday!

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That's WAY too much information :eeps:

Ripsnort:

Thanks a bunch for taking the time out to do that. It looks like the leatherette really has held up well.

The part I was talking about is in the middle of the seat (where you spine touches) where there are a couple horizontal seams. This sort of shows in the upper-left part of picture 1. Sorry I don't know how else to explain where I'm talking about (the center of the backrest?).

For some reason, with the Sand Leatherette, they had pulled that area really tight. Same with where your legs touch against the bulsters. There was no look of padding being there, it was more or less flat because it was pulled so tight on both of the sand cars. The area I'm talking about can be seen in image 3, the diagnal going from left down to right \.

There seems to be no such issue with your car (which is the same with the black 'ette I saw today), so I'll be going for the black leatherette. More durable, cheaper, hard to tell from real leather... this just seems logical.

It seems odd to me that they would treat the material differently based on its color. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that the black 'ette was on a car with SP (which I am ordering), and the sand cars didn't have the SP. But wouldn't the back seats still come out the same if this were the case? They were very different. :dunno:

Thanks again Rip, I owe you one!

--SONET