Replaced LE light gray cloth with Limited black leather

Nice!

So, you replaced just the rear so far, or the fronts too? You had some seat covers on the front as I recall.

I just didn't like the oem gray cloth. I put some nice pleather covers, front and back and like them. They clean up well, and that's been my experience in MINI and BMW-their oem pleather is nice too. Wasn't a 10 minute job though.

There was a little thing I had to figure out to get the middle belt off, as I recall.

A plus about the covers versus oem, is that the cushions seem thin. The covers MAY add a little body to it, but who knows.

Anyway, if you don't have the fronts, get looking!

 

I didn't think there were airbags in the seats; sensors I thought were under the seat. Of course, seat heat would be nice....here anyway.

I really like the covers I put on.

Upholstery/Seat Covers ? | PriusChat

 

I'm not doing any deep dive or commentary here but there are SRS side airbags that are installed inside the front driver and passenger seats that run along the outer perimeter of the seats that I believe deploy through breakaway seams in the stitching. So, perhaps, seat covers need to accommodate for that? (rear seat side airbags are not in the seats). Page 35 onward of your 2026 owner's manual describes/shows it and Page 41 has a warning about seat covers. Be safe.

 

Thanks. The diagram confused me. They're apparently towards the bottom of the front seat backs. I recall the cover maker saying something about 'special' stitching and panels. Hopefully I won't have to test that out.

 

Your bigger problem about finding front seats to convert your car is that any you find will be power(XLE) or power with memory(LTD). And you don't have the wiring for either. You could probably wire in a powered drivers seat from an XLE fairly easily as all it needs is adding a power feed. But the seat from a LTD would be pretty tough as the seat is actually controlled by the Main Body ECU. Doable as your ECU is can do the job once it's plugged into the seat, but it's a lot more wiring work(plus you should also install the memory buttons on the driver door at the same time to make it fully functional).

Now you could always try just swapping the seat covers, and I bet the upper cover would swap just fine, but it's possible the lower cover might be cut differently on the driver side because of the power seat controls and a different seat structure. Since all passenger seats are manual no matter the trim, there's no issue on that side.

But on the bright side, black XLE seats are very easy to find in salvage yards. The seat airbags only go off during an impact on that side or maybe a rollover, so finding seats without blown bags is pretty easy(trust me, I searched gen5 junkyard seats for almost two years). Most front and rear collisions don't set them off, and that's a big share of cars in salvage yards. Just be thankful you'd only be searching for the relatively common XLE driver and XLE/LTD passenger seats instead of trying to find a rare XSE/XSE+ set out of a Prime like I was doing. Two years of searching and I eventually finally found a set I had to have shipped to ND from Fresno($ouch$). And they turned out to be from a smoker's car, so it took even more work(and an ozone machine) to finish the job(I still get the faintest whiff of cig on a hot day when I first get in).

Good luck if you plan to finish the job. It's really nice to get your car exactly the way you want it if you plan to keep it for a long time.