– By Eric Fantin – This winter, one of my projects for my own cars was to attend to the interior of my 1965 Volvo 122 S. (Amazon in Volvo speak.)
When I bought the car a long time ago it came with a nicely redone interior. Unfortunately it was not 100% correct. The previous owner opted for a weird gold/bronze color (matter of taste at this point). The car originally had a red/wine interior with a black body. I eventually painted the roof in red to liven the worn out black paint. (I plan to repaint the whole car someday, maybe, eventually.)
These cars were available in two-tone from the beginning of production until 1964 so not correct but close enough. The red and black combo forced me to deal with the interior since now the gold color really clashed with the exterior scheme.
I was originally going to buy the correct seat skins. They are available, amazingly, with a couple Volvo vendors, but the idea of tearing down a perfectly nice interior seemed like a total waste of time and resources. A friend suggested vinyl paint. Apparently this is used in many applications. My only prior experience was rejuvenating a tired interior in the same color so I was left wondering if a drastic change in color was possible. I was assured by several professionals that it was done all the time and if applied correctly, it should last for a long time.
I decided to take the plunge and bought the appropriate paint and prep material and proceeded to take all the seats and door panels out the car and start the process. My experience is this: it is important to clean the material first, depending on the condition of the vinyl. That is the most consuming part of the job. Then there is a special prep material applied to slightly soften the vinyl before spraying. The actual spraying is done in several light coats with 5 minutes to 10 minutes pause in between, the number of coats will vary with each application, in my case I did 4 coats.
The result is very satisfying. The interior is now in sync with the rest of the car. I am still not sure how it is going to wear. I will find out this late spring/summer when we all pull out our vintage steeds and enjoy salt free roads! I fear I might end up with a red back side. Just to be safe I will avoid wearing anything white at the beginning and see how it goes!
Eric Fantin can be reached at straigh8@gmail.com
