My 1968 GS California car is in serious need of interior help all around. I see that many vendors are reproducing GS seats and GS Custom seats, but the interior from a California GS is actually the Special Deluxe interior. It should look like this: Mine is much uglier. I cannot find anyone making this type of seat cover. I wonder if any other covers work in this car? Trying to put this thin pillar coupe "GS" back together is a bit of a challenge. Any help or ideas appreciated. I must say I like the pattern of the 67 GS bench seats and wonder if they would fit...
SMS seems to list interiors for the 1968 Special Deluxe as available- but I have heard they do that with everything. Have you reached out to SMS or Legendary and discussed having them made? The embossing is the biggest hurdle to overcome, but both companies are already equipped to do so. I'm sure they could at least sell a thousand sets, so the tooling investment may be worth it to them. Weird stuff is starting to appear these days such as four door and wagon Chevelle and Impala seat covers and door panels and stuff like 1960's Biscayne and Bel Air interiors which are going to sell so slowly it is even amazing they appeared. They aren't cheap though.
SMS appears ready to do it if you want to so spend the $. They sent me nice 3 page handout with a xerox copy of the Special Deluxe interior on one, and fabric samples of the materials in another, and a summary on the third. The fabrics looked right and the drawing looked right too. The headliner material looked wrong to me. My cars original was the kind of diamond or basketweave thing. I don't think either of these companies have any interest in this, as they are super busy as is. Also I think you are overestimating demand for this? How many frame off Special Deluxe cars do we see? They only built about 4000 California GS cars in 1968, so how many of those are still rolling?
There was also 21,988, 2 door Special Deluxe’s made in 1968- which share the same interior with the GS California. 26,000 cars isn’t a ton, but even with a ten percent survival rate it is 2600- if a 1000 out of those cars are restored to various degrees they will sell enough to make money if the retail cost is what they are charging for the Impala wagon stuff which is much higher than the 2 door SS stuff. We don’t see a lot of Specials restored, but we also don’t see many restored 1969 Corvairs (Production was 6000) yet Clarks Corvair Parts reproduces the seat covers and door panels for 1969 Corvairs. Maybe I am over estimating demand, but I also never thought the would start up reproducing wagon and sedan door panels for any makes and they have been doing that for almost ten years now.
