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by Alex Harrington August 19, 2022, 5:22 pm

The interior of the Nissan 350Z is pretty plain and plasticky. There’s lots of cheap materials used across the dash and when you look up, you see a boring, grey, rigid headliner that doesn’t do the car any favours. Fortunately, I found a place on Ebay that sells custom-made suede and leather products for you to upgrade the interior of you car in no time at all. And when I write that, I mean it took me bloody ages. But it looks great.

The headliner was bought from JF Customs. They sell all sorts of leather and suede pieces that you stick to your car’s interior to spruce it up. And while I’ve so far only bought the headliner, eventually I’ll collect the full set, from dashboard to door cards. Click here to see the headliner I bought.

I had plenty of questions for JF Customs, who were more than happy to walk me through whether their products would fit my year of car as well as any other questions I had.

It arrived folded up. I was worried about the fold marks being visible, but they were quickly pushed out as soon as I laid it across my table.

The suede was soft and had plenty of stretch to it, and the back was lined with foam.

The yellow stitching – more colours are available – was perfect and the fibres were thick and dark. I’m hoping it has some form of UV protection, but as it sits on the headlining of the car, I don’t think it will matter if it doesn’t.

First I sized up the headliner. There was plenty of material left over on each side, but I centred the two lines of stitching first before sticking down the centre.

Using the Evo Stik Impact Adhesive and paintbrush, I painted a small square of both the headliner and suede covering to ensure a strong bond. I laid it down carefully and pressed hard before running the squeegee over it. You can add quite a lot of glue to this before it starts going through thanks to the foam backing, so don’t skimp on this!

I then lifted it up and continued down the centre a portion at a time.

Once the centre was finished, I focussed on one side, sticking down about 3-4 inches of suede each time, slowly making my way across. In dips, for example where the sun visor sits, I applied more pressure for longer and stretched the suede where necessary. This was really easy with this product which had a lot of movement in it.

Once the whole thing is covered, cut the overhanging edges so there’s about an inch or two to wrap around and stick on the back.

24 hours later, when the glue was completely dry, I started cutting out the holes for the lighting, mics, and sensors, again leaving flaps so they can be wrapped around and stuck down, too.

I can’t fault this product whatsoever. It feels and looks high quality, and for an idiot like me, stuck down really easily to my original headlining.

Honestly, the hardest part of this project was fitting the headlining. It’s very fiddly, but with another person there to help, it was far from impossible.

The car interior has been completely transformed with it now feeling much more premium than standard. Having suede in a car does that, now I only have to make sure it stay clean. Yes, hairs and bits of lint really stand out, but this isn’t a reflection of the quality of the product, I just need to give it a wipe down since fitting it.

Maybe the only downside is the fact that the rest of the car now looks pretty poor in comparison, especially the sun visors that now stick out like sore thumbs. Fortunately, JF Customs has something to help here, too…

This post isn’t sponsored. 

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