Re: Interior restoration question

Posted by BH On 2011/1/4 14:53:46

bhappy -

It's natural for threads to drift off-topic over long periods. I'm just glad we got back to the headlining question. As you can see, if you've been following the thread, that question opened up a real can of worms, as type of headlining material doesn't appear to have been well-documented in the available factory materials.

Yet, in additional to the good anecdotal evidence, I've since found that Packard covered headlining material, as bulk yardage, in two separate groups of the parts book: fabric (cloth) in Gr. 31.4742 and "imitation leather" (aka - vinyl) under the last subheading of Gr. 31.481.

Trim Set No. 43, as originally used in your '56 Exec sedan, is only referenced in Gr. 31.4742, which confirms it was cloth, and shows it was Light Green in color. Nothing else beyond that.

While the factory didn't offer an all-leather interior (in regular production) in the Exec or Clipper lines for '56, it appears, then, that any Trim Set involving vinyl or leather would have had a vinyl headliner. Though the parts book has little more to say about that material than color, our anecdotal evidence suggests that material would have been perforated in '56. However, it looks like it wasn't available in any dark shades, back then.