(14 Sep 2015, 5:57 pm)aureolin wrote Perhaps I'm missing something, but there seems to be a discrepancy across eLeather seating, and I know I'm not the only enthusiast to notice this. The Sapphire spec provides the most comfortable example of eLeather in the North East in my opinion. I find MAX spec to be a bit too firm and slippy, and I find the ones in GNE's Streetlites to be like sitting on a wooden bench. It's got me a bit baffled to be honest, as I thought it was all exactly the same!

I've had this conversation with Marcus, and I still don't understand how some enthusiasts think that there's differences between e-leather seating on the same type of seats. When I had the conversation with Marcus, I honestly thought his judgement had been swayed by the colour of the seats, as the Sapphire colour-scheme is a lot more appealing than the darker colour-scheme of Go North East's Streetlites (they say the packaging of food can often sway opinion on the taste).

I think there's a tiny bit more padding on Civic V3 seats than Civic V2 seats (in addition to the headrests), which is why the seats in Sapphire vehicles are marginally more comfortable than those in the 'eco-green' livery for example. Go North East's e-leather seats are Civic V3 too though, and they feel exactly the same as Arriva's Sapphire seats to me.

If there is a difference, all I could put it down to is the fact that Go North East's vehicles are newer and the Sapphire ones aren't as firm given that they've been used more. When I compared the two when new, it did seem that Go North East's had more padding, and I think I noted this on the forum at the time.

Obviously it's an entirely different ball game when you throw different seating types into the mix: the e-leather seating on the ADL Enviro400MMC demonstrator (recently used on Go North East's X21 service) was incredibly comfortable.