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If you're a car enthusiast, you've probably read about, seen or felt a product called Alcantara. This soft, suede-like material shows up on steering wheels, shifters, door panels and even headliners, typically on higher-end sports and luxury cars. While it looks and feels like a special exotic suede, Alcantara is actually just a synthetic microfiber fabric developed in the 1970s by Toray Industries in Japan. The fancy name came after Toray joined forces with the Italian oil and petroleum company ENI S.p.A. to manufacture and distribute the new material. The new company was dubbed Alcantara S.p.A., which does sound a lot nicer than faux suede, microfiber fabric or Ultrasuede.

Alcantara goes from a proprietary blend of polyurethane and polyester to a finished fabric after it's subjected to various needle punching, buffing, glue-impregnating, extraction and dyeing processes. There are, of course, some other steps to the protected process, but those are tightly guarded by Alcantara. Ultrasuede is made in basically the same way, except by different people -- true Alcantara is only made in Italy, whereas Ultrasuede is made around the world.

Alcantara is often found in high-end cars, so if material cost isn’t really an object, why not just use actual suede? Well, Alcantara is both lighter and more durable than natural suede; that said, it's still one of the more delicate fabrics you’ll find in a car’s interior, and it requires special care when cleaning and maintaining.

So next time you see a car advertising fine imported Italian Alcantara, you'll know that it’s just a fancy way to say synthetic suede.