When I was younger I had relative who bought car seat covers and covered up their perfectly fine seat with a cheap and ugly fabric. I thought that car seat covers were hideous.
However I changed my mind after having my current car about 11 years and buying it at 5 years old. In that time the drivers seat began cracking and that was uglier than a car seat. I investigated what it would cost to have it professionally done, and the company that I got a quote from said it would look new from factory for $2500. Well I couldn’t afford that so I let it go.
Finally the drivers seat got worse and so something had to be done. I looked over some car seat covers online some costing as much as $600 and I couldn’t justify that for a vehicle that will be totaled if it gets in an accident. I found something at $200 that I thought might work.
It came in and I put it in last week and it really makes the appearance and functionality much nicer. In addition it has a cushion and I had been using a third-party cushion but with this new cushion it both makes the seat warmer, and doesn’t require adjusting the cushion before you start using the car.
I should have bought a car seat sooner but I was both unimpressed with the car seats growing up, and a little lazy in not looking harder at my car seat options instead of having it professionally done. The car also needs a paint job and that is $3500 from a local place that is highly rated. When the car is worth maybe $5000 blue book, its really hard to justify spending that on a paint job.
The car seat covers the seat breaking, and now I have to decide if I get extra money this year if I want to fix the paint issue as well. Theoretically people who have the same year/model say that they got 70k more miles before a major repair. Is that worth driving in style and protecting the metal frame? I think so, I just need more time to save.