Aftermarket leather - how to/where to

[quattroboi]

I was looking at a bunch of new cars, and decided on the Mazda 3 S 5 door. One of the car's drawbacks is the lack of trim levels/options thus a lot of the cars are very very the same. I would get the leather, but simple black leather doesn't do it for me - so I wanted to do a relatively cheap 2 tone interior.

How expencive would it be to just get the seats/where ever there is cloth replaced with leather? How much for some trim like on the doors as well? Also any good places that you know of in my area? (I'm in Richmond VA and Washington DC)

The leather option is $900 on the car - but without it I can negotiate far below than if I got the option. Plus, the leather doesn't even feel that great and is simple black... I was thinking a white/dark blue 2tone.

Thanks

[Tomsriv]

I bet you could get that work done for $900.

[quattroboi]

Any clue as to where I should look to get it done? I mean, I'm sure I could cold call places, but I was wondering if anyone has experience with this in the VA area.

[Tomsriv]

I would recommend you go to some car shows in the area and ask some people with custom interiors where they got their work done.

[SickVette]

www.katzkin.com

Believe it or not ALOT of leather is NOT from the factory but actually installed by the dealer. Most of it comes from Katzkin or another company called Classic Soft Trim. I have installed both products and Katzkin is superior. I would check into those two companies unless you want something that is totally unique then try a custom interior shop. But to get the same quality as Katzkin's you are going to pay far beyond 900 bucks....more like 2k.

[quattroboi]

Thanks a lot! I don't know if you've seen it, but the Mazda RX-8 uses similar seats to the Maz3, but the leather is this awesome 2 tone - so I was hoping to match that in the Maz3 - replace the boring solid black. Car I have now is anthracite leather - it's high quality, so I didn't want to take too many steps backward!