Leather Driving Gloves Defeat Sweaty Palms
I’m not the only person in the world that gets sweaty palms while driving. I’ve found that wearing leather driving gloves really does help. But, do you have to splurge on deerskin? Let’s find out.
While searching for leather driving gloves online I found some very nice ones but many were upwards of $100. I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend that much for something I was only going to try out at first. One day, while shopping with the family at the Carlsbad Factory Outlets I walked into Wilson’s Leather and I started sifting through their leather motorcycle gloves and I found the gloves featured in this article.
Wilsons of course had tons of lined-leather gloves, but I didn’t care for any of those. Those are popular with motorcyclists because of the added warmth. When you’re in a warm cabin you don’t need the inner lining. I wanted a pair of gloves that would be as thin as possible, so I could actually feel the steering wheel. The gloves I’m using here are unlined leather driving gloves and they have a zippered-closure and a slight bit of elastic near the cuff for better fit.
While I don’t know if they will work with all touchscreen systems, these gloves seem to work fine for me on the touchscreen of my car’s MyFord Touch Sync system. However, they don’t work all that well on my iPhone screen. I can still make them work by pressing hard on the iPhone’s screen, so for minor things like making a phone call to a saved number they would be fine. I wouldn’t want to try and text using these though. That said, they are easy to put on and take off if you need to do so to use your phone.
For the price, they are excellent. No, they are not the same quality as a pair of $100 deerskin leather driving gloves. However, for $30 or so, they are of really good quality. The bottom line is that if $100 is too much for you for a pair of deerskin leather driving gloves, then $30 for cowhide is better than sweating at the wheel and losing grip. More so, it’s nice to be able to justify buying more than one pair to have a pair in each car… and put the glove compartment to real use!
The smallest size available for this zippered leather glove pair is medium. I’m a medium, but honestly I think a pair of smalls would likely wear in better and conform to my hands better. These are a bit loose in some areas, particularly near the fingertips. It’s not a biggie though and for the most part they are just fine.
Wilson’s does have a set of leather driving gloves that goes all the way down to small in size. These also feature the classic knuckle holes you’d be familiar with from those great driving movies. You would have to be OK with the Velcro closure instead of the zipper. I didn’t get those at the time I got the zippered ones simply because they didn’t have smalls in stock. But I intend to order a pair very soon.
Either of these gloves would be an ideal starter leather driving glove for anyone. For the price you also wouldn’t feel too bad leaving them inside a hot car during the summer. Eventually, if you do end up liking wearing leather gloves for driving, you can save up a bit and splurge on a pair of expensive deerskin driving gloves.
Keep in mind that if you order any of these leather gloves for driving using the link to Wilson’s Leather you help RallyWays continue to do what we do as we get a small commission for the sale. Please note that we only recommend products that we love and use ourselves. My own pair of Wilson’s Leather driving gloves are sitting on the console of my Ford Fiesta ST right now waiting for my next drive. I’m ordering a second pair, likely the velcro closure ones with the knuckle holes to keep in the RallyWays Miata.
