Front Seats

When Harlow Zinn restored the car one of the things he did was have the leather seats restored.  The seat cushions and seat backs were maintained in original factory leather however he had repairs carefully done.  In the case of the cushions the seat covers were removed and the spring unit repaired, new felt padding installed, and the original leather repaired and put back on.  As most Stanley’s were garage kept, the leather is saved the punishment today’s leather interiors receive when they are kept ungaraged all the time.  Additionally leather processing in the early 20^th century didn’t rely on harsh chemicals for tanning and coloring and thus with proper care it lasts much longer than today’s leathers.  It is obvious from the photo that the ravages of time, decay, rot, and use have finally won out. 

There were also enough holes, tears, split seams, and other openings in the leather that the “animals” had found a fine nesting place.  Hazelnuts, oak nuts, pine nuts were plentiful and from the copious quantities of broken shells everywhere there was either one heck of a party or there had been generations of “animals” born within the internal maze of springs and support materials.  The interior photos of the car which follow were taken after a through shop-vac cleaning.

One of the body problems that doesn’t show in any of the photos is the manner in which the doors aligned with the body.  From folks climbing in and out of the car over the years and pulling themselves into the car by grabbing the body side panels the side panels had spread outwards.  This resulted in the doors no longer sitting flush into the side panels of the car.  The car body is in reality a wooden frame to which sheets of aluminum have been hand formed over.  With the constant tugging, drying of the glued joints, loosening of the screws holding metal support brackets, and some wood rot, the frame had become loose.  When a door closed and latched, even though the top edge of the door and top line of the body reasonably aligned because the latch was near the top, the lower unhinged edge of each door could be anywhere between a finger and thumb thicknesses off the surface of the car.