My personal favorite is cloth, while leathers comes in second, and vinyl comes in last. Cloth seems to get dirty very quickly...but the comfort level makes it well worth it, as well as its durability from destruction. Vinyl is cold in winter and way too sweaty in summers (here in san diego especially) It also cracks really easily if not taken care of religiously. Leather i suppose adds value to the car, but it's subject to the same problems as vinyl. It is a bit more cool than vinyl during summers. Again the best is cloth.

Had vinyl in my '82 wagon. It splits too easily, is cold in the winter and sticky hot in the summer. The lil' turbo has cloth seats, original with no sign of wear at 120,xxx miles (sun faded, but no wear), and comfy as could be. The cloth is much better for "agressive" cornering ;-)

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don hodgdon '89 744ti, '81 242t, '71 D-35

I have seen quite a few bricks in the boneyard lately and what seems typical in these approx 150K to 250K examples is that vinyl OR leather seats always seem to have cracks in driver's seat and often front passenger as well. Cloth seats are occasionally torn or worn through in driver's, but usually not. Cloth may be very dirty, but the covers can be easily removed and washed.

If I were you, I think I would get two passenger cloth seats (they are often in GREAT shape)and either rebuild your driver's seat using one of them as a donor or just convert the knobs to the other side of one and make it a driver(either way you will be left the two original holes from where the knobs used to be though.) If you get seats with heaters in them I think it's just a plug-in since I believe all the 240's come prewired: not sure about having to add switches.

For the back seat, I can tell you that when my kids were small and I was buying a new car, I would have ordered it with cloth in the front and vinyl in the back since the kids have car seats anyway. Of course, no manufacturer does that. Vinyl is much easier to keep clean. So if exact match isn't a factor and you can get the same color cloth and vinyl, that might be the way to go with kids or dogs.

Andy
'91 745 Regina 184K, '89 244 135K, '87 245 lost the rust battle at 225K

Both of the later 240 seat fabrics seem to hold up well. The diagonal patterned fabric in my '88 is still looking good after 190K mi and the '89 and later is usually in good shape when the cars come into the yards. Personally I hate leather, the '92 I just picked up has the best looking and softest leather I've ever seen in a used Volvo and it is still harder than cloth. The 250 mile round trip to drop the seller off at home after he delivered the car made my butt hurt, the same trip in my '88 is a breeze. Maybe if I could move some of the padding that has gathered at my waistline down a little further ;-)


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Dave Shannon
Spring Valley, California (San Diego area)
'84-245 200K+
'84-245T 190K+
'88-240 190K+
'92 745Ti 150K
'01 Jeep Wrangler Sahara 10K
www.volvo2.homestead.com

I have a '90 wagon, 5 speed, with fabric seats. Great set up. I have heard the fabric called "tricot" as well. I have the graphite grey paint with the black interior. I had a '90 wagon with vinyl seats as well. I've also experienced leather, split leather, and whatever the 78 242 fabric was (too itchy). All Volvo.

I love the tricot seats-hate the vinyl-freezing in the winter, sticky in summer. I would highly recommend swapping out a sedans front tricot seats' (more likely to find) if you come across them.

My .02 cents,

Steve

I've owned 3 240's - 2 wagons and a sedan, for an aggregate of 550,000 miles (not all mine). On the wagons, the vinyl driver's seat got ratty-looking at around age 10-11. Having recently moved to the desert southwest, the vinyl makes me sweat 10 months of the year! The cloth on the sedan is much more comfortable year 'round, so I'm looking for a pair of junkyard seats with decent cloth to retrofit to my '92 245. I'll leave the back seat in vinyl for the sake of transporting pooches around.

Depends what you want out of life. For the best durability, I favor the tweed-like cloth out of early 80's DL sedans.

But never in wagons, so you couldn't match the rear. Wagons only had leather or vinyl.