To us, few aspects of car restoration are more satisying than returning a crack- house interior to its former glory. After all, for a car that's driven more than once in a blue moon, you spend most of your time enjoying it from the inside. If you own a really popular car like a '57 Chevy, a first-gen Camaro, or an early Mustang, restoring your interior is relatively simple because you can buy just about everything from the many catalog restoration companies that specialize in these popular models. But depending on the make and model, you may find that offerings are slim for lots of other very popular cars. Many items, such as replacement gauges, steering wheels, and interior chrome and trim simply aren't reproduced, and even among popular brands, stuff like upholstery and door panels for some of the lower trim levels such as Chevy Biscaynes and Plymouth Belvederes can also be hard to find.
The good news is that often your worn-out parts can be restored, so there's no need to go searching around in junkyards for replacements that are in no better condition than what you already have. The same holds true for restoration parts. Although something is better than nothing, some resto parts are made overseas and the quality and fitment can be disappointing in some cases. Unless you've got the cash and time to scout out new old stock parts to replace your worn-out originals, your best bet is to search out qualified specialists who can put a new shine on your tired interior.
Using our '65 Chevy Bel Air station wagon as a example, we've compiled a guide to companies that specialize in services to help you get your interior back in tip-top shape. We didn't just open a catalog and order every new part we could find, mainly because we couldn't, since lots of the wagon's parts are different than a two-door car's and therefore not available off the shelf. Plus that would be lame. Instead, we focused on fixing what we had and finding original-looking replacements for parts that were missing or beyond repair.
Restore or Restify?
During the interior restoration of a 20-plus-year-old car, you’ll be faced with many opportunities to deviate from its original colors and materials, and you’ll have to make choices about the level and type of restoration you’re trying to accomplish. At the car shows we attend around the country, we see basically three types of interior restorations--which we’ll call concours-quality, mild-resto, and custom--and each has its merits. The concours restoration tries to return every detail of the car to its as-new condition, which means that if the factory shade of the dashpad didn’t match the kick panels and the kick panels didn’t match the door panels and the carpet didn’t match anything, that’s still how it will look when the restoration is complete. This type of restoration is very difficult and expensive to accomplish and is best left to show-only cars. The mild resto applies to most of the "restored" cars we see at car shows and many daily drivers. The intent here is to return the car to close to as-new condition, but the owner may choose to upgrade certain areas or install parts that aren’t stock, like steering wheels and gauges. He may also choose to match interior colors or makes slight changes, such as using a different pattern seat cloth than came stock. This is the type of restoration the majority of people shoot for, and for the popular models and trim levels, you can buy most of the parts you need from restoration specialists. With a full custom interior restoration, anything goes, and it’s up to the restorer’s personal taste. We suspect that the reason so many people "customize" their interiors is because they can’t find, or don’t want to pay for, the parts to put it back to stock condition. Since our 1965 Bel Air wagon is a daily driver and far from a show car, our goal was to keep it as stock- and vintage-looking as possible without replacing any more parts than were necessary.
