okay Jeff, you are correct that there is some excellent surface dyed leather - very little is good these days. i over-simplified my discussion. so, lets restart this discussion and talk about top grain and full grain leather ... and then there's the anomaly "full top grain leather". which do you think is better?
the answer is full grain leather. the leather hide is split into layers. the very top is the "full grain". many people think that it would be top grain. top is short for "topped" grain, which means that the top layer or layers have been removed. why is this important? the full grain still contains the pores which lets the hide breathe. it also allows you to clean the leather and rehydrate with preservative oils to keep the leather from drying out due to ultraviolet. top grain doesn't breathe - which is why many cars perforate the hides - to make them more comfortable. the farther down the hide, the lower the grade of leather. there are other factors that determine the grade of leather - one is which what kind of animal the hide comes from - calf, cow, ox, etc.
if you go back to connolly, they worked the color into the hide, then ran the hyde over rollers / knobs to return the suppleness to the hide. jaguar / rolls hides were then antiqued. they had a very unique process. connolly primarily used the top of the hide (full grain). so this was the top of the market at the time, and one of the best surface applied finish ... but make no mistake, they worked the color into the surface. one of the companies that does similar things today is a company called Edelman. Moore + Giles does both surface finishes and aniline finishes.
my point about most auto leathers today is they are generally the cheapest of leathers with the cheapest finish processes. and many of them look worse than the best vinyls. fine leather has character - if you look at old connolly leather, you will see the grain - now you see embossed grain - especially with top grain.
this is a subject that i am still simplifying ... if you want more detail, happy to provide.
Scott I have to disagree about surface dyed leather. German leather was surface dyed...
"Better leathers are aniline dyed - color thru and thru. less expensive leathers are surface dyed (effectively spray painted). you can scratch thru the color. again the back of the leather tells the story."
In the old days up to around the 1980s German and most automotive leather was surface dyed and this was considered top quality. I have some NOS German leather for early 911s and it is almost bullet proof... It is true that if you aggressively scratch it that you will see the underlying color but that is also why when perforated you see the same contrast in the holes (originality detail). Connally leather when they were in business had numerous grades of surface dyed leather. Some great for Rolls Royce some other was total Sh!t...
Back in 1982 I went to but my Dino Spyder. I told the owner that I doubted the car had 20,000 miles because the dye on the seats was all rubbed off. It turns out I learned that Ferrari bought the absolute lowest grade of Connally leather and it was famous for the dye rubbing off almost immediately. In the late 1970s this was a huge problem for the 308 Ferrari guys because within the first 1,500 miles their seats started to show wear!
