It's as vital to the looks of your ride as anything, and it can have a rough (or rougher) life than your car or truck's paint. It's also where you spend a lot of time when you're on the road, and one area shown with pride at shows big and small. It's an expanse of soft trim, foam, framework and trim pieces that (in original-equipment form) can be pretty nasty by now, especially if it's been in a daily driver that's been left uncovered to face the sun's relentless assault.

We'll take a look at the areas around your ride's cabin that typically get attention when it's resto time, and we'll also give you info about getting the stuff you need to make that cabin look showroom-new once again.

First Things First: Do It All-Or just Some Of It?

Restoring your interior should start with pre-old-interior removal legwork. The next time you're at a show, cruise night or other event, look for cars/trucks like yours that are sporting a new, original-appearing interior. Chat with that ride's owner and find out who he sourced the reproduction parts from, whether he got 'em in a complete interior kit or piecemeal, and if he didn't install it himself, what upholstery shop did. If he's had good luck with aftermarket vendors and/or a trim shop, he'll be happy to tell you. If his experience went wrong in any way, he'll tell you with some choice words that we can't re-print here!

Once you've done that, find out who produces everything that your ride's cabin will need-not just seat covers and carpets, but all the other stuff-dash pads, headliners, knobs and trim pieces, etc. You might be surprised how much stuff goes in that big space inside your sheetmetal!

A restored interior has the ability to take someone back in time-and the impression that the seats produce can make the difference between a pleasant remembrance and a painful one.

To do an interior resto right, you need to start with the right framework. That means a seat frame that isn't bent or fatigued by age-and a fresh set of springs to go on that frame, too. There's no sense putting new foam and seat covers over springs that have gone through thousands of cycles of use (and have the sag to show for it).

And we mean new seat covers and foam cushions all around, not just for one well-used bucket seat or just the front bench. With a complete set of new seat covers, there's no need to worry about matching the color of one seat's new upholstery to the existing seats. (That's something bordering on the impossible-even with colors like black and white!) Also, the fabrics and vinyls used to reproduce car and truck seat covers carry with 'em the benefits of advances in material technology over the past few decades. In a nutshell, that means that repro seat covers made with them are more resistant to the sun's ultra-violet (UV) radiation, thus more fade-resistant than before.

Speaking of stuff that's benefited from advancing technology, that also includes the foam used in seat cushions. The foam that's made into cushions today keeps its shape better than the stuff used by the OEMs way back when-which would take a "set" over time (especially in the driver's seat base).

What happens to a vehicle's carpet over its lifetime is brutal. Dirt, salt (if you're up north or back East), spilled food and beverages, leaks from anything carried on the floor-all add up to one big mess (and a stinky one, too)! If you're going for a correct, factory-fresh appearance, be sure that the type of carpet that you get is the same type as what the car was built with (cut-pile, nylon-loop, etc.), not just the same OEM color.

When you take that old carpet up, take note of the insulation and sound deadener that is/was there. Sources for reproduction carpets (and interior kits) offer insulation that's cut to fit the floor precisely, enabling the carpet to be dropped on top of it and tucked into place. (Note: Ease of installation is why original-equipment carpets began to be "press-molded" years ago-something that today's molded carpets have.)

Before the "downsizing" that started in the mid-'70s, most U.S.-made, fixed-roof cars and trucks either had cloth headliners that were held in place by strategically-located glue splats on the ribs attached to the underside of the roof panel, as well as by a collection of hardware-or a one-piece, molded plastic headliner that didn't need to be glued (but turned the inside of your car into an echo chamber). From about '77 on, the OEMs began press-molding their cloth headliners, just like their carpets, for ease of assembly.

There's no sense in keeping the original headliner if you have a brand-new, made-to-factory-dimensions-and-color headliner available. That goes double for a cloth headliner that's noticeably drooping downward. (Especially if you can get a headliner as part of a complete interior kit.)

There isn't a part on a car or truck that gets as much abuse from the sun (and got neglect from previous owners) than dash pads. They sit in the sun all day, all year 'round, and the cracks and fading that happens to them over time is a consequence.

For folks who own popular rides (like Mustangs, Camaros, Corvettes, GMs '64-'72 A-Body midsize cars, Mopar A-, B- and E-Body cars), reproduction dash pads are readily available, in correct colors with the correct grain pattern on 'em. For folks whose rides don't fit into those categories (like '55-'62 "Forward Look"-era Mopars, for example), there are vendors that can take your original dash pad, strip off the old vinyl and padding, then refinish it in all-new material with the correct color and grain pattern.

As for what to put inside/underneath that new padding, keep your eyes open for reproduction gauge faces/lenses, as well as for shops that can either rebuild or replace your stock gauges. That's especially true if you've got something like an early-'60s vintage Mopar with an "electroluminescent" gauge cluster that looks like a pinball machine when it's all lit up.

When it comes to little parts like knobs and trim pieces, be on the lookout for either repro items (best when you can get 'em as part of a complete-interior package, cost-wise), or for places that can re-finish and/or re-plate your "chromed" plastic pieces if they're not available as restos. High-priced NOS or NORS items, like what you might find at a swap meet, are also a choice-but only if your original pieces are either missing or too far gone for restoration, and if you can afford what the swap vendor's charging for those original bits.

Facing almost as much abuse over time as seats and dash pads, door and side panels can get pretty rough over time-but can either be replaced or refinished to showroom-new condition.

As with dash pads, ready-to-install reproductions are available for the most popular cars and trucks, while many of the same vendors that restore LOOP (Long-Out-Of-Production) dash pads can also do door and interior side panels for those cars and trucks, giving those rides the benefit of modern materials while giving them back their classic (to the owner, at least-Ed.) looks.

If you go the ready-to-install route, go with a set from a source that you're familiar with (thanks to your chats with owners of rides like yours.

Ever seen original steering wheels from the '60s or '70s that look like they have a piece missing from the rim? They don't-they have the same amount of material coating the steering wheel's core that they had when the car or truck was built. What's happened is that many small cracks have grown together into one big crack, which got wider as time went on. That's thanks to a chemical process called "outgassing", when the chemical components of the steering-wheel-rim material break down and escape.

If you want to keep the steering wheel that your ride came with (and it's the original one), look for vendors and suppliers who have steering-wheel repair kits, which not only fill in the big crack, they also do it with the correct color and grain pattern as original.

Console Yourself: Consoles, Trim Bits and "Little Stuff"

Center consoles began appearing in U.S.-made cars during the '61 model year, and for many bucket-seat-equipped cars, the resto job isn't done inside until the console's looking as good as the dash and seats.

Reproduction consoles are available for many musclecars and ponycars that are direct replacements for the worn/trashed OEM items. If it isn't being reproduced, you can have it re-covered by the same folks who do door/side panels-and you can score hinge/latch repair kits, which can make that console usable to put stuff in again!

Things To Save If/When Found During An Interior Resto

A ragged-looking piece of paper that can turn up during the resto process can be most valuable to your resto project's success. We're talking about the "broadcast sheet"-that page or two of computer-generated codes that told the crew on the assembly line what stuff to install on the car as it came by. Once the car was finished and ready to drive off the final assembly line, the broadcast sheet was tucked under the back seat cushion, or under the front seat. Be sure to keep it, and keep an eye out for folks who can de-code it, giving an accurate description of the standard equipment and options that your ride was built with.

Other stuff worth keeping includes coinage and paper currency, as well as anything of sentimental value that doesn't stink too bad. (A word about cassette/8-track tapes you might find in the glove box or under the seat: Magnetic tape gets brittle with age, so be sure that you have a means to save the recordings on that tape because you may only have one playing left before that tape's oxides (i.e. the brown stuff) starts flaking off, taking the recording with it.)

Stuff NOT to keep? That's easy-if it's crawling around, or looks/smells like something that crawled out of a bad horror movie, trash it!

The repro interior items that are now available should last a lot longer than the OEM soft trim that your ride came with. That's thanks to advances in technology which enable resto-trim makers to provide you with products whose UV resistance is light years better than the comparable OEM materials (and thanks to your taking this prize ride of yours out of daily-driving service and garaging it more often than it was in the past!).

Don't look at the following list of sources as the end of this story-they're the beginning of the revitalization of your ride's insides!