1991 Ford Mustang LX Interior Resto

Horse Sense:
If you're into classic Volkswagens, then you already know Classic Automotive's interior parts. Its full line of Bug, bus, and beyond upholstery, carpet, headliners, and so on has long been a staple of VW restoration and upgrading.

Maybe you don't know it, but Ford offered leather upholstery in Fox Mustangs. Never as popular as the standard cloth and vinyl, the pricy leather option has been lightly addressed by the restoration aftermarket.

That is, until recently.

First-tier upholstery specialist Classic Automotive Interiors took scissors and hog rings to some hides and spooled up leather upholstery kits for Fox coupes, hatches, and convertibles. The new leather kits complement Classic's existing line of cloth and vinyl Fox upholstery.

Here's a representative Classic leather kit for a single front seat. Having the major sections prestitched saves hundreds of dollars and untold hours compared to a completely custom job.

And boy, are we happy Classic moved beyond cloth.

Our '91 LX hatch could once flaunt its luxo hide interior, but 17 years of corn-fed editors and Southern California sun made a moonscape of it. Dry, cracked leather had long given way to craters of exposed seat foam and the occasional wire structure, and the seat frames were feeling more like rocking horses than supportive. Dogs many have loved to curl up on it, but our wives were beginning to refuse, and we realized we had grown accustomed to slouching at an angle behind the wheel. It was time.

The seats are built from three major components: frame, foam, and upholstery. The frames are pressed-steel skeletons that provide the weight-bearing structure. The foam is molded, provides cushioning, and evens out the support provided by the frame. The upholstery looks good and keeps everything cleanly wrapped up.

Classic has the answer to every seating issue except the frame. You'll need to scrounge elsewhere for those should yours be horribly abused or missing in action-most are reusable. In our case, Joe Gosinski at Chicane Sport Tuning (www.chicane sport.com) smoke-wrenched our broken driver-seat frame back together while installing carpet ("Neat at Your Feet," July '07, p. 58), but a wrecking-yard seat would also work.

This cratered mess of a driver seat is what we dragged through Classic's door. Dried, cracked, and torn, our factory leather interior had clearly seen its best. Collapsed seats like this are Fox norms today. It will take new foam buns and upholstery to restore them.

Classic's upholstery offerings for Fox seats are the standard vinyl and optional leather, along with its own Pony and Mach 1 options. Classic's Pony upholstery has the look of the Pony package found in early '65-'66 Mustangs. The Mach 1 upholstery looks like the early Mach 1 seats, but the material has been cut to fit the Fox seats. Normally available in vinyl only, Classic can be talked into all sorts of specialty or customization work (monograms anyone?) and leather Machs aren't unheard of.

Each of these upholstery styles is sold as akit through Classic dealers; it doesn't sell direct to consumers, but there's a handy dealer locator with some familiar names on its website. The kits consist of precut and sewn upholstery pieces, so the new vinyl or leather is ready to slip over the seat structure.

The new leather interior follows Ford's lead, using leather only for the center of the seat cushion and backrest; the rest is vinyl. A full leather upholstery kit, including the front and back seats, is $799. The headrests are sold separately because there are three different versions from Ford, so you need to specify which one. They cost $39 for a pair, and they're all vinyl because that's what Ford used. Seat foam is $163 per front seat; rear-seat foam isn't available. The total for leather seats, headrests, and foam is $1,174, or you could use vinyl for far less.

Here's the same seat after Classic installed its foam and upholstery. We had to get used to sitting high up in our Mustang again; the new seat foam is noticeably thicker than the collapsed and cratered original padding.

By now you can count on front Fox seats requiring that new foam, as well as upholstery. The foam is molded into a specifically shaped bun, which Classic makes in-house for the various Fox seats. The bun gives the seat its shape; it's the part that collapses with age and rewards you with a backache, so replacing the front-seat buns is vital. Back seats, because they're rarely used as seats, rarely need buns, so Classic hasn't made them yet.

Classic makes buns for the three versions of the '79-'93 Fox front seats: the standard low-back seat, the high-back GT seat, and the GT seat with knee bolster. We have the GT with bolsters.

Underneath, the refurbished seat is just as good looking as the top. Don't forget to schedule time for cleaning and generally fiddling with small seat parts, including the adjusting lever, lumbar support rocker switch, and so on. You'll want them looking concours when the new upholstery goes on.	Because it's impossible to accurately locate every access point in an upholstery kit, it necessary to cut a few holes for the side bolster adjuster, lumbar switch, and so forth.	While the Classic upholstery is carefully crafted to replicate the original and will be accepted as such by all but MCA concours judges, it's not a pure re-creation. The rear of the front seats is upholstered in vinyl, not carpet, and the stitching spacing is a bit wider. Big deal, we say, but if you're building a 100-point, trailer-queen restoration, you'll want to install the Classic stuff while searching the next decade for N.O.S. leather upholstery. Good luck!
Installation begins by stripping off the seat rails and all knobs and switches, then disassembling the seats into their major components before removing the old upholstery.	Most disassembly is easily seen stuff, such as the knee bolsters that slide free once their roll pins are tapped out. There are a few spots where the fasteners-mainly hog rings-hide deep in the upholstery folds.	Hog rings are everywhere, and they're all cut off with dykes. This row of rings along the front of the lower cushion is easily found, and as is typical, they wrap around a length of wire.