"if you had a westy weekender your seats would be shredded beyond recogniton
with 290k on them.  and yes, "shred o matic" is actually the factory volkswagen name for the tan
corduroy."

I have the tan corduroy, but fortunately it has not been as bad as you say.  My '86 Weekender had ~160K on the "recently" broken odometer when I bought it 7 yrs ago.  Only the front seats and arm rests were funky.  I covered the front seats with sheepskins, and bought some covers for the armrests from Sewfine, and I was good to go.  But lately, the back seat has split in a couple of places - the result of my 2.5 yr old 100 Lab's fondness for the back seat.  I now have ~260K on the Westy.  

I'm thinking about doing an interior upgrade.  Among my choices are: 1) Finding some replacement fabric for the tan corduroy.  Does anyone out there know if there is some fabric that looks close, and is reasonably durable?; or 2) an entire set of covers from Sewfine in one of their tan fabrics; or 3) (this one may or may not be a good idea, but I'd appreciate some feedback) replacing my front Westy seats with a really nice set of Porsche 944 black leather Recaro seats (no arm rests of course), and covering the rest of my seats with a black fabric from Sewfine.  

My van is a gold '86 Westy Wolfsburg Weekender.

Tom LaLanne