I personally don't like the feel of Alcantara - I'd rather have a nice leather wheel. If you are planning to keep the car, I think it's a decent upgrade assuming you enjoy it. One caution, not sure how BMW does things, but for some OEMs it's next to impossible to remove the switches from the wheel without breaking something, so, factor a complete set of new switches as well - it's probably better to keep your old wheel completely intact anyway, you could probably either sell it or hang onto it in case the next owner wanted to go back to the oem version.