Leather Car Seats, this Vegan says No!

For some people, car shopping is a pleasure, for my husband and me it’s a pain. Especially if, like most people, you’re on a budget. And with the added pressure of your present car being condemned by your local garage, that it could break down anytime, it’s STRESSFUL! We needed a new set of wheels, fast.

Let’s go car shopping!

So, here’s the story. We were really attached to our faithful old 2014 Ford Kuga. Up until now it had never let us down. But, now the ol’ girl was beginning to fail us. Time to look for a new car.

My husband, assuming the alpha male role, took charge and began looking for a reliable new set of wheels on the internet. His checklist was fairly straightforward:

Not too high mileage

A good engine size

A good number of miles to the gallon

A style and colour of car he can look at on our drive and not regret! (I on the other hand don’t really care about the colour, although I’m not mad about grey.)

A rear-view camera (We already had a rear-view camera in our old Ford Kuga and had come to rely on it, as you do, lazy I know.)

At this stage it didn’t cross my mind about leather car seats or interior.

What sort of car then?

With the need to cart around our ever-growing number of grandchildren, in a car with a big enough boot to fit a double pushchair, we decided on another diesel SUV. If the infrastructure had been better across Britain and Ireland for electric cars, we’d probably have considered buying an electric one or a hybrid. But, having to stop every few hours to charge a battery just isn’t practical on a long car journey from Berkshire to the west of Ireland, where we very often holiday. So, instead, my husband decided to go for a diesel car with AdBlue.

AdBlue – what’s that?

Still not thinking about leather car seats…

So, painfully wearing out his eyes looking at cars, my husband trawled the web. He made a shortlist of all the cars that might suit us. We sat down together that Friday evening, and he read out the possible candidates for us to check out the next day. We quite liked the thought of a Mercedes; they are a reliable car, by all accounts. And this car purchase would have to last a while, as we’re not the sort of people to buy a new (albeit used) car often. It doesn’t seem cost-effective or eco-friendly.

‘Here’s a good one,’ he said, after taking a sip from his well-earned Guinness (Guinness is vegan if you didn’t know. I wish he was!) Anyway, back to the story. He read out the checklist on a particular vehicle. All checklists ticked, that was until he said, ‘It has leather seats.’

No way – I can’t go for leather car seats!

‘WHAT?’

How could I have forgotten to put this on the checklist?

‘No way – I can’t go for leather seats!’ I cried, choking on a sip of wine. The penny dropped, FINALLY!

Needless to say, my husband looked disappointed. He’d studied cars that week like he was studying for a degree. He was not happy, like I was being a brattish diva. Being nonvegan himself, he didn’t quite understand.

After discussions got a bit heated, my daughter interjected, suggesting getting seat covers. She was only trying to help I suppose.

But I would still be sitting on leather, essentially the skin of a tortured dead cow, was all I could think. Hell, I may as well have my pet dog skinned and be using his fur as slippers. Yuk!

After explaining this several times, both my husband and daughter understood a bit more where I was coming from, sort of. Although, I think my husband thought about skinning the cow in front of him.

He huffed and started his search again. He emailed and rang around many dealerships, but many were saying the same thing – the cars had leather seats. Can this really be, we thought? Afterall, our ol’ Ford Kuga didn’t have leather seats.

So, with that, we thought we’d call into a local Mercedes dealership to ask about vegan interiors. A very knowledgeable member of staff explained that a lot of car makers are now turning away from leather interiors for ethical and sustainable reasons. Great news! I looked it up on the web and according to this PETA survey, Mercedes was one of those makes.

We checked out a few other used car dealerships in person, but a couple of them were pretty clueless about non-leather, vegan interiors. Some weren’t taking it that seriously either, continuing to do the hard sell, even though I stipulated that I was vegan. Others couldn’t be bothered to check or were saying the seats were leather, but to us they didn’t look like it. We were convinced they were some sort of vinyl or fake leather.

Artico Leather – what’s that?

After seeing this video, I think a lot of dealerships were confusing Artico leather (fake leather designed and created by Mercedes) with real leather.

To cut a long story short we did find a car and are very pleased with it. It has Artico leather car seats, as stated in the description. And it meant switching to an automatic to widen the search, but we’re more than happy with it. Yes, it is a Mercedes. Fingers crossed it’ll last us a while, at least!

If, like me, you can’t bear the thought of having a leather interior, whether it be on the seats, steering wheel, trims, etc. it’s worth doing your homework. Many makes and models have fake leather, which to me is more comfy and practical than real leather.

Check out this PETA survey and visit car dealerships in person. And hopefully soon the barbaric practice of using leather for car interiors will be a thing of the past, making life a lot easier for us vegan car shoppers.