Topic: Speckled to Plaid Trunk Mat Changeover - Dearborn

[Countrysquire]

Is there an agreed upon date range for the change from the speckled burtex to plaid rubber trunk mats?  I ask because I?m slowly working my way through my mostly original 70,000 mile 6/20/64 Dearborn coupe, I see that it has a plaid mat that I believe to be an original based on how brittle it is and the texture. It has been a long time since I?ve seen an NOS one, but I seem to recall that the service replacements had an ink part number in the long upholstery trim format. I couldn?t find the sign of anything printing on the back of this one. It might be an original from another car that someone swapped out, but that doesn?t really fit the character and history of the car, so who knows?

Thanks,
Bobby

[J_Speegle]

Took some time to look through what I've got in pictures and it appears from what I've got that they started with plaid style, moved to speckle then went back to the supplier doing the plaid style. Looks like something that we need to try and document and them place in the 65 Dearborn Running Change thread so I'll start a new thread on the subject looking a the complete year and ask for members observations and documented examples

For your specific question about 5F07D173**  with a projected build date of 20F I offer the following from what I collected today

- I have cars VINed and with projected build dates before your car with what appear to be original speckled trunk mats  and cars

- I found cars with lower VINs but slightly earlier projected build dates with speckled trunk mats

- I have a car VINed approx 30,000 higher and with a projected build date of 14H with plaid trunk mat


Hope this helps

[Countrysquire]

Thanks Jeff, it definitely helps. Here?s a photo of the diamond pattern on the bottom, and I believe it to be an assembly line part. I?m certainly no authority on 64.5s, but wouldn?t have expected to see a plaid mat in a June 64 car. If not original to the car, there could be a hundred explanations of how it got there. That said, I would like to hear from anyone who has a June 64 Dearborn car with the original trunk mat just to see if a plaid mat is a plausible possibility.

[J_Speegle]

Thanks Jeff, it definitely helps. Here?s a photo of the diamond pattern on the bottom, and I believe it to be an assembly line part. I?m certainly no authority on 64.5s, but wouldn?t have expected to see a plaid mat in a June 64 car. If not original to the car, there could be a hundred explanations of how it got there. That said, I would like to hear from anyone who has a June 64 Dearborn car with the original trunk mat just to see if a plaid mat is a plausible possibility.

Don't see a picture

The challenge is that we don't know when these cars were exactly finished so your car could have been done May or July or simply in June. We may likely never know for sure but original sheet metal dating would help to narrow down the periods it could not have been built

[Countrysquire]

Probably because I forgot to attach it but it?s there now. I haven?t had time to inventory all the sheet metal dates yet to see what is the latest stamping, but this I?ve paid attention to are late May to mid June.

[J_Speegle]

Probably because I forgot to attach it but it?s there now. I haven?t had time to inventory all the sheet metal dates yet to see what is the latest stamping, but this I?ve paid attention to are late May to mid June.

We'll the most recently stamped panel sill of course narrow the possibilities as you well know - just mentioning it for the viewers

Need to pull up some other plaid examples with a view of the back side. Wonder how many suppliers there were as I would think there is a chance the back design may be different - east to west

[mgmradio]

In my experience with original plaid trunk mats, the part number on the bottom side was in large block letters.