Upholstery books, Mr. Biggs?

[garyash]

I knew there had to be books with lookup codes for upholstery. The regular body/chassis parts book don't even list kick pads, seat frames, and related parts. I have asked many people if they have ever seen an upholstery book and always got a "no" for a reply. Of all the things that might make a REALLY interesting CD-ROM, a Stude upholstery disk would be extremely useful at times. So, who actually has some (and might allow them to be scanned)?

Gary Ash
Dartmouth, MA
'48 M5
'65 Wagonaire Commander
'63 Wagonaire Standard

https://www.studegarage.com

[Roscomacaw]

Well Gary,

I suppose I used the term "book" with some liberty. But I seem to recall asking David Spilski of SASCO the pointed question as to HOW they sought out stuff for a given trim code and he said that they had "reference material" (he COULD have said "book - it's been several years now)to refer to when a request was made for a given seat cover or what have you.
Heck, I'll call SASCO and ask Dennis myself. I don't wanna be spreading rumors and get folks hopes up when there's no basis to it.[}] But I'm sure that's the jist of the answer I got when I pressed him for one.
What you said about the kick panels and such is partly true. There's lotsa carpets (by colors), kick panels and such in the body books. But there's nothing about door panels, seat covers, headliners and other bits. And as you say, that could be a boon to researching such stuff.

Miscreant at large.

1957 Transtar 1/2ton
1960 Larkvertible V8
1958 Provincial wagon
1953 Commander coupe
1957 President 2-dr
1955 President State
1951 Champion Biz cpe
1963 Daytona project FS

[JDP]

It's all on factory index cards in SASCO's office, no book that I've seen.

Studebaker On The Net http://stude.com
64 R2 4 speed Challenger (Plain Wrapper)
63 R2 4 speed GT Hawk

[Roscomacaw]

Thanks JDP! Gary, there ya have it![:0]

Miscreant at large.

1957 Transtar 1/2ton
1960 Larkvertible V8
1958 Provincial wagon
1953 Commander coupe
1957 President 2-dr
1955 President State
1951 Champion Biz cpe
1963 Daytona project FS

[55s]

I own a beautiful Salesman's book for 1955. It would probably cost hundreds of dollars to produce today. In it, there are actual swatches of the materials, full colour pictures of the cars and options, comparisons between Studes and other makes, and some very ornate working pictures with sliding cardboard parts. It is about 1 1/2 inches thick and is 8 1/2 x 11" landscape, and came in a nice brown leather zippered pouch.

I've got to believe that they produced these books for other years.

Paul

[Skip Lackie]

They did produce something similar in most years, though probably not in the leather pouch. Later ones were produced as landscape-aspect dealer albums in nice loose-leaf binders. But they did not include part numbers for such things as door panels or seat covers -- just a small upholstery sample. Good enough for a match, perhaps -- but no help in learning if SASCO or anyone else had original items in stock.
Skip Lackie

[bondobilly]

[quote]Originally posted by Skip Lackie

They did produce something similar in most years, though probably not in the leather pouch.

I have two books, one for 63's. and one for 56. In each they have cut samples of fabric, color chips, and what combinations you can and cannot get.

[garyash]

Now we just need to send in someone with a laptop and a fast scanner to SASCO, scan all the cards, run the OCR (optical character recognition) program, and generate an indexed CD. Actually, with scanned images of the right flavor, the OCR process and CD generation could be farmed out pretty easily. I'm assuming that all of the cards were typed or have computer-generated text. I got a great CD with PDF files of all the the Carter carbs for Studebakers and it's at least indexed by year and car type, though it wasn't really OCR'ed.

Would Dennis Lambert and Dave Spilski permit this? I'm guessing that it would not be permitted to take the cards more than a few feet from where they reside. This is the kind of project I'd love to see the museum take on, though I think even they don't have enough staff for it. Andy Beckman can't do everything for everyone.

Gary Ash
Dartmouth, MA
'48 M5
'65 Wagonaire Commander
'63 Wagonaire Standard

https://www.studegarage.com

[Skip Lackie]

We must keep in mind that SASCO is in business to make money. They have done us all an enormous favor by maintaining a massive supply of NOS parts for our cars, 40+ years after most of them were built. If you own something that old that was built by the Big Three, you are aware of how expensive repro stuff is, and how poor the quality can be (especially on interior stuff). The parts available through SASCO are a relative bargain, and they're NOS! Anyway, much as I would like to see those cards digitized and available to all, we must be careful we don't place SASCO in the position of having to say "no" because doing otherwise would be to their competitive disadvantage. Newman and Altman were the guys who saved our parts from the landfill 40 years ago, and Dennis Lambert is the guy who came up with the money to save them again and move them across the street. Having that card file gives him a competitive advantage that no other vendor has.

One final thought: Knowing the part number of door panel doesn't do you much good if there are none in available anywhere in the world except (maybe) at SASCO.

Skip Lackie
54 3R6 pickup
59 4E40 flatbed dump
64 Daytona hardtop
74 Avanti II

[garyash]

I don't think anyone wants to hurt Dennis or SASCO. It's more likely to help. The SNM must do OK selling copies of build records, and some availabiltiy of the information might help Dennis to sell the mountain of old upholstery. But, Mr. Biggs is going to discuss the matter with Dennis. Maybe they can come up with an idea or two that helps Dennis and also helps to permanently record some very useful information. It's a little scary that the sole reference to this material is a card file box in a building that has seen much better days. There's a lot of Studebaker eggs in that one SASCO basket!

Actually, an NOS interior for my '65 Wagonaire did come out of that pile. The SASCO people found the seat covers, front and rear, and I found four door panels when I was there once. The problem is that you usually have to bring pictures of the stuff you are trying to replace when there are no numbers to match up. It's a daunting process, highly dependent on luck. I very much appreciate that they survived these past 40 years in excellent condition, as well as Dennis and Denise's dedication to their business and the Studebaker hobby.

Gary Ash
Dartmouth, MA
'48 M5
'65 Wagonaire Commander
'63 Wagonaire Standard

https://www.studegarage.com

[Skip Lackie]

No argument with any of that, and I had a similar experience. Dave Spilski used the index cards to help me find many of the interior parts for my 64 Daytona, but I was still short a seat bottom cover and a rear quarter interior panel. Dennis allowed me to go upstairs at N&A and look for myself. I was able to find the missing interior rear quarter unboxed (and therefore unmarked) in roughly the correct location, and a seat bottom, also unboxed, lying dirty and trampled but otherwise unharmed on the floor. And I agree that it's a bit scary that the key to all this knowledge is in only one location.

But I still believe that part numbers are of little use (except to SASCO) if the parts exist at no other location than SASCO. If the interior parts were scattered around the country like exterior trim, then the part numbers would be critical -- but almost no except SASCO has NOS interior stuff.

Skip Lackie