What's the best wearing material for aggressive seat bolsters?

I'm starting a project to reupholster a race seat (Sparco Evo 2) for street duty in my 911. My current plan is to do leather or vinyl surrounding pepita fabric, which I think will be attractive in addition to having a nice story with some Porsche heritage.

I recently saw a GT3 with a similar layout. Unfortunately, the seat bolsters were already starting to show significant wear where the driver slides into the seat with only 3,000 miles on the odometer.

I want to see if I can do better. I'm less picky about surface finish and perceived luxury than I am about something that's going to hold up really well over time. I don't mind maintenance and I can tolerate a fairly expensive material.

Where should I look? Is vinyl or leather going to work better? Or is cloth what I really want? If anyone would know, I'm figuring it's you guys.

Good high quality leather will last a long time, but the kind of leather that will hold up to that location on the seat will require a pretty hefty machine to sew it.  Good leather will last, but you can expect that wrinkly/stretch that you see on a lot of seat edges.

I think vinyl will die fast.

A good poly/nylon woven fabric would do well, like a tweed-ish fabric, but in whatever color you want.  The cheapest cloth seats you could get in OBS Ford pickups was nearly indestructible.  This tweed-like stuff in my 98 F150 went for 249k and got dirty, so I pulled the seat out and pressure washed it, let it bake in the TX sun for a week to dry out, and reinstalled.  It looked brand new.  I thought for sure my 6.5hp 3200psi pressure washer would rip it to shreds, but it didn't even bring up the fuzzies.

Not my truck in the picture, but the tweed-like fabric they used in the XL trucks that you see on the butt and lumbar part of this bench....

Does Dallas have a "fashion district?"  When I lived in LA I would go to the fabric district and shop for things like that.  Some surplus stores have fabric.  Any fabric store will have upholstery fabric, but it will cost you 10x as much compared to wholesale.  I bought a whole bolt of 60" pleather with a really strong fiber backing for a couch project for $7.50/yd.  Probably would have been $30-40/yd at JoAnn

You want Ultraleather Pro.

Some random website that sells upholstery supplies (feel free to remove the link): http://www.derbyfabrics.com/ultraleather-pro/

If you expand the tech specs on that page, you'll see that it has a Wyzenbeek score of 500,000+ rubs (Wyzenbeek is the upholstery durability score used in the USA normally) and a Martindale score of 200,000+ rubs (Martindale is the durability score used in the rest of the world). For refrerence, a Martindale score of 40,000 is a good benchmark for public transit upholstery, and a score of 200,000-500,000 is specified for police cars, fire trucks, ambulances, etc (severe use in very abrasive environments).

You can browse through the rest of the vinyl options on that site and check their durability scores for something that has high ratings and a look you like instead.

In reply to Curtis :

I actually live in Tampa now, and if we have such a place I don't know of it. I like the idea of the truck fabric. Maybe I can find a good OEM source. Separately, I'd really like to know where GMC is getting their steering wheel material for the Acadia.

In reply to the_machina :

Yes! This is what I'm looking for!

Relicate Leather

https://relicate.com/

I wonder if Seat Concepts would sell you material separately if you were to contact them about it?  I would think that anything which holds up on a dirtbike seat should do just fine inside of a car.

The Sparco EVO 2 seats do have a small area that sticks out that is prone to wear.  It's cool that there are materials other than leather to keep them looking good longer.

Here is my EVO 2 in my FX16.  This was covered in leather back in March 2013.  The car only sees about 3,000 miles per year and the leather is already showing signs of wear.  It's doesn't look too bad as I've used some leather cream on the worn area.  I had more lumbar padding added and another 1" bottom padding added.  It's pretty comfortable once you're in.

Oh, and I was not expecting so much bling on the headrest logo.   But it does kinda negate the temptation of stealing it.

In reply to trucke :

That seat looks great! Very similar to what I'm trying to accomplish, but I have driven 20k miles in the last six months 

Get some 1st gen honda crv fabric. Every junkyard crv I see with 300k looks mint inside.

Seriously though, there are automotive grade leathers and there is everything else. Make sure you pay extra for the correct one. Chekaflo has a video demonstrating the wildly varying quality of leather for seats. 

In reply to Nugi :

Chekaflo?

A helpful trick may be to upholster that area as a separate removable piece, so you can re-wrap it once in a while with minimal impact to the rest of the seat.

In reply to ProDarwin :

I like the idea, but can't really envision how you would do that.

white_fly said:

In reply to ProDarwin :

I like the idea, but can't really envision how you would do that.

Very similar to the seats you show in the first post - the section above the seatbelt hole (non-buckle side)

In reply to white_fly :

Apply a panel with velcro that can be easily replaced.  May not be as practical as it sounds as it may peel during ingress/egress.