In this episode I start the process of refurbishing the interior. While I’m waiting for paint, I order some of the interior components from Paul Champagne such as the center console and custom 928 steering wheel. Clayton Foster at Panther Glass and Upholstery starts working on recovering the interior parts with leather and Alcantara.
Transcript:
Hello and welcome to the eighth episode of Bruce's 928. In this episode I'm going to show you the work that we've done to customize the interior of my 928. When the 928 was new it was a beautiful car and compared to other cars at the time it had a well-refined interior that was downright luxurious. It had all of the latest features: power heated leather seats with memory, climate control, cruise control, power sunroof, trip computer, central locking, it even had air pressure sensors for the tires. It really was the executive sports car. It was the ultimate grand tourer and is still considered that by many people today. Unfortunately, most 928 interiors don't hold up all that well. The dashes in these cars crack. It's hard to find a 928 without a cracked dash and mine, despite the low kilometers, was no exception. The materials used in the 70s and 80s just weren't the same quality as what you'd find in a high-end car today. Look at how refined a new Porsche 911 looks today compared to 25 or 30 years ago. It was always possible to order a 928 with a full leather interior but it was expensive so you don't see very many of them around. The cars without leather still have a beautiful and functional design but the interiors came with a lot of vinyl. The seats of course are leather but the door panels, headliner, center armrest, rear quarter panels, are all vinyl or naugahyde as it was sometimes known. You know I hate to think of all the poor little nagas it took to create the interior of a 928. I think my 928 is deserving of a much nicer interior. I don't want to change it so much that it no longer resembles the original look, but I do want to improve it while staying true to the car's origins so rather than just going with a full leather interior I'm going to enhance the look by covering part of the interior with Alcantara. Alcantara is a high-end fabric which looks a lot like suede. Here's a newer Porsche with a combination of leather and Alcantara. It was developed as a high-end alternative to ultra-suede and it's made specifically for automotive use. I originally planned on having all the interior covers supplied by Paul Champagne. Paul specializes in 928 interiors and his work is absolutely masterful but because his work is in such high demand, Paul no longer installs the covers that he creates so I needed to find a local upholsterer to install them. Unfortunately, at the time I started this project the Canadian dollar was at a 10-year low so I decided to get much of the work done by a local upholsterer.
Well my business is Panther Glass and Upholstery. We've been doing this for 35 years. Well the car came to us in actually very good condition, it didn't need any work. This is just something that the customer was wanting to do and it's always been his dream car. He just wanted to put a personal touch on it and he had some really good ideas and it's just been a great experience putting this together.
We're going to recover the door panels with Alcantara along the top edge and on the insert. The rest of the door and handle assembly will be covered in leather. The dash will have Alcantara along the window with the remainder of the dash in leather. The entire headliner and the A-pillars will be in Alcantara and the center console will be leather. Another special little touch that I'm doing, I've decided to order the center armrest assembly from Paul Champagne along with a new shift lever. Paul Champagne makes an armrest which is an inch and a half higher than the original. That gives more storage space inside the armrest but it also makes it a bit more comfortable for driving. I've also added a tray to hold my iPod that's connected to my original Blaupunkt stereo.
The center console for the armrest was elevated so that it would have a little bit more compartment space and paul has built it and really all I'm going to be doing is recovering it because we have the materials here and so that everything has a good flow and match.
Now the other very cool thing I'm doing is I'm getting Paul Champagne to recover my steering wheel. He's recovering it in leather and Alcantara to match the interior of the car. I even had Bruce's 928 very discreetly engraved on the bottom of the airbag. It's a bit of a splurge but I think it's going to be the crowning jewel on this car when it's all done. So that's the interior. The car is now getting close to being finished and in the next episode I'll show you how the painting and reassembling is coming along. Now before we wrap today I just want to mention that no actual nagas were harmed during the filming of this episode. Thanks for watching!