Has anyone discovered a way to prevent the seat leather in our cars from drying and cracking over time? I bought my '95 850 with the front seats like this and recently purchased a '01 XC with the seats in good shape. Many of the older used vehicles I've looked at have the front seats cracked, I'd like to preserve mine if possible. Thanks!

 

Lexol. will soften your old seats too.
To refinish try; Home Page | Leatherique Restoration Products

 

Treating it with conditioner (cleaner first) is the only way I know. When I owned exotics I'd get zymol straight from zymol. Very expensive but very good. Their auto store grade leather treatment has always been pretty good too. I've found that my volvo hides are pretty good quality, and have lasted well--198k miles on 98 and very little cracking. Much of the "cracking" is appearance where the wear lines are different color than surface dye of leather. That can be fixed by dyeing. I've owned black leather where I used shoe dye on it and it worked outstandingly well. Seats of different colors are just harder to match. Good luck.

 

+1 on the Leatherique. A little pricey, but better than anything else I've tried on old dried out leather.

If your seats are nice and you just want to maintain them, then just about any brand name conditioner will keep them moisturized.

 

Lexol

 

Thanks for the tips!

 

We use the Zymol cleaner and conditioner on ours and with 155k the seats still look brand new. Window tint and a sunshade help a lot, leather does not like sun at all. Another unconventional method to revive old seats is to use saddle soap. Any farm supply or saddlery shop will have it, its expensive but it does a very good job bringing back old leather. Stay away from that cheap crap they sell at Wal Mart if you try the saddle soap, pick up a genuine product from a specialty store.

 

Good call on the saddlesoap. Something most don't think of/consider. Something else which works but is very pricey is exotic boot conditioner. It is very liquid compared to other conditioners, but never tacky and won't stain clothes. Have used that before also.

 

Good call, never even thought of that.