What is Alcantara fabric and is it worth speccing on your new car?

There are a lot of confusing terms when buying a car, one of the least intuitive being Alcantara. This word will appear, always capitalised, on spec sheets with no further explanation other than that it’s a fabric - so we’re here to help.

If you know your primary school English, you’ll remember that proper nouns always use capital letters, so yes - Alcantara is a brand name. It’s a Japanese-owned Italian company called Alcantara S.p.A, based in Milan.

The Alcantara fabric itself is a suede-like material, but it’s man-made with polyester and polyurethane. It has a similar soft and slightly fluffy appearance to suede. There are actually competing products to Alcantara that appear on some cars called Ultrasuede and Microsuede, which shows how close it is to suede in appearance and feel. It’s tougher-wearing than real suede, though.

Alcantara is used in cars for a few reasons. Since it’s not shiny like leather, it’s great for dashboards because it doesn’t reflect light and reduce visibility in the windscreen. It’s also grippier than leather, so it’s often used on steering wheels in sporty cars to give keen drivers a better hold on the wheel during track days.

That’s why Alcantara is often seen in high-performance cars - McLarens have it all over their cabins - but Alcantara might also be worth speccing on your new car simply because it looks and feels great. The company would tell you its product is just as high-quality as leather but we’ll let you be the judge of that. What’s more verifiably true is that Alcantara is vegan and stays cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter than leather.

The material does have some drawbacks, however. The textured surface absorbs grease from your hands when you touch it, so after a while it starts to look rather ugly. It needs quite regular maintenance with a special upholstery cleaner to keep it looking good. It’s not difficult or expensive to clean, but you need to keep on top of it, especially on a steering wheel or other areas that get regularly touched.

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