Chapter 39: Meeting the Originator of Aircraft-Inspired Interiors
Chapter 39: Meeting the Originator of Aircraft-Inspired Interiors
“Hold on. Move aside for a second….”
Baaah—
The goat inside the barn was not particularly afraid of people. If anything, it stood squarely in front of me as though it owned the place and refused to move.
“Shoo! Shoo!”
Ethan picked up a long branch from the ground and smacked it threateningly against the floor.
Baa—
Only then did the animal reluctantly step aside.
“Haha, I think it believes that car belongs to it.”
Ethan set the branch down and smiled awkwardly.
Without saying anything, I approached the abandoned vehicle.
There was no lighting inside the barn.
Instead, thin shafts of sunlight slipped through the gaps between the wooden boards and illuminated parts of the body.
The paint, which had originally been a brilliant silver, had completely faded into a peculiar gray.
Neat tail-fin accents, a sharply descending roofline, and a chrome grille shape reminiscent of a Mercedes….
To think such a dignified car has been reduced to a goat shelter inside a barn….
[1964 Studebaker Gran Turismo Hawk]
(Translator’s Note: Studebaker Gran Turismo Hawk — A personal-luxury coupe produced from 1962 through 1964. Styled under industrial designer Brooks Stevens, it combined the earlier Hawk body with a more formal roofline and an upscale, aviation-influenced interior.)
Studebaker was a historic independent automobile manufacturer whose origins went all the way back to carriage production in 1852.
In particular, during the aircraft-design craze of the postwar Jet Age, the company positioned itself at the center of the trend and became practically the embodiment of a pilot’s fantasy.
(Translator’s Note: Jet Age styling — A post–Second World War design movement inspired by jet aircraft, rockets, and spaceflight. During the 1950s and 1960s, cars frequently featured fins, turbine-like trim, aircraft-style gauges, and cockpit-inspired dashboards.)
Among its vehicles, the GT Hawk was one of the first to adopt a cockpit-style interior with seven gauges, giving drivers who longed for the skies the sensation of piloting an aircraft.
“This is my first time seeing a Studebaker in person.”
“Wow, you know this car? You’re the first person I’ve met who recognized it at a glance.”
Ethan stared at me in surprise.
That was understandable.
Studebaker had stopped producing automobiles in 1966, with the Gran Turismo Hawk among its final significant models.
Should I consider myself lucky to encounter one, or unlucky…?
—————
Exterior: B-
└ Corrosion on the trunk panel
Interior: F
└ Seats, trim, and carpeting require replacement or repair.
Powertrain: B+
└ 289 V8 engine is not seized. High probability of recovery after replacing fuel and ignition lines.
└ Borg-Warner T-10 transmission in good condition.
Oil leaks present.
Water leaks present.
—————
I first used my appraisal skill to conduct a basic inspection of the vehicle.
Its condition is somewhat ambiguous.
From the outside, apart from the fact that it had been abandoned for a long time, it was not in particularly terrible shape.
Corrosion around the trunk panel was a chronic problem with this model, so that was unavoidable, but the mileage seemed relatively low, and the original owner appeared to have cared for it quite well.
The engine had been designed by Studebaker itself and was a fairly robust unit incorporating forged components in several areas.
The transmission was the same four-speed manual type I had encountered in the Corvette.
However, compared to the decent exterior, the interior was hell itself.
I had prepared myself from the moment the goat appeared, but….
I could not tell whether the goat had chewed everything apart or whether it was simply the result of age.
The seats were badly damaged, and nearly every interior material had either rotted away or cracked.
The appeal of this car is ninety percent its luxurious interior….
Interior restoration was not something that could be solved easily just because I possessed special abilities related to mechanical work, so this was quite troublesome.
“Um… Is restoration impossible?”
Noticing that my expression had stiffened slightly, Ethan spoke cautiously.
His eyes practically screamed, What if he refuses?
“Hmm…. No. It is possible.”
There was no such thing as a car I could not restore.
There were only cars that required more money and time.
“However, specialists in each field will need to handle the exterior and interior, so it will be expensive. The parts won’t be cheap either.”
I honestly explained the entire situation without adding or subtracting anything: the expected costs for corrosion repair, suspension, and powertrain work, excluding paint and interior restoration, as well as additional expenses resulting from the difficulty of sourcing parts.
For reference, I set my labor fee at eight thousand dollars.
“So would it be accurate to expect the total restoration cost to exceed twenty-five thousand dollars?”
“Yes. That will probably be the minimum, and you should leave an additional margin of approximately thirty percent.”
The market value of a fully restored Gran Turismo Hawk was around the mid-forty-thousand-dollar range.
Even in its current condition, it could probably sell for at least nine thousand dollars, so unless someone had a strong emotional attachment to it, restoration offered very little financial advantage.
If unexpected costs arose, it could even become a loss.
“Then take your time considering it and contact me again after you decide.”
I had provided at least a rough estimate, so the decision now belonged to the owner.
He would probably give up because the potential gain was too small….
Just as I began thinking that—
“No. I understand everything you explained. Please proceed with the restoration. I can prepare the money immediately.”
Ethan decided on the spot without the slightest hesitation.
Normally, cases like this required caution because the client might later change his story.
However, the affection in his eyes whenever he looked at the car made it clear that this restoration was not about money.
“…Understood. Then let’s sign a contract. Since I’m already here, I’ll take the car with me today.”
“Yes. Thank you for accepting it! I’m already excited to see how this car will change.”
I was the one who should have been grateful for the commission, yet Ethan thanked me and offered his hand.
I brushed the dust from my hand against my trousers and grasped his firmly.
It was the moment my first restoration commission was finalized.
“Urgh! What the hell is that smell?”
I nearly vomited.
That was the price I paid for unloading the car at the warehouse and recklessly sticking my head inside the seat.
It was not merely the smell of old dust.
Nor was it the musty odor of mold that I had already grown accustomed to through this work.
It smelled like rotting organic matter mixed with animal waste, then thoroughly fermented.
I hurriedly covered my nose and threw myself backward, but the powerful particles had already stabbed directly into my brain.
“Wow…. This is genuinely a first.”
Until now, I had mostly worked on the mechanical portions of vehicles whose interiors had been well preserved, so I had let my guard down.
Huff, huff—
After equipping myself with the mask I had used during the fiberglass restoration, I entered the interior again.
The condition looked even worse in the light than it had inside the dark barn.
The headliner sagged heavily, while ammonia from rat urine had formed something sticky across the floor mats.
Rice-shaped rat droppings had dried and shriveled across the top of the dashboard, and various interior components had cracked or faded from weathering.
“…I’ll just strip everything out.”
If I tried cleaning it carelessly in this condition, I would inevitably end up doing the work twice.
Click, click—
I started by removing the seats, which were the most obstructive components.
I pushed a ratchet into the narrow gap beneath the seat cushion and loosened the bolts that had been corroding for decades.
I worked as quickly as possible, holding my breath whenever necessary.
“This will have to be completely remade.”
The condition of the seat after it creaked free was even more miserable than I had imagined.
The rats had chewed away nearly all the foam, and acorn shells, kernels of corn, and more rat droppings poured from inside the torn leather.
I can’t work on this in here.
It was already late September, but the Arizona sun was still fierce.
Even so, being roasted alive outside was better than scattering unidentified contaminated dust throughout the warehouse where I lived.
Fortunately, the vacuum’s power cable reached the yard in front of the warehouse.
It was an industrial vacuum with sixty kilopascals of suction power.
Whirrrrr—
Its large cylindrical stainless-steel body vibrated violently as it swallowed everything, large and small, in an instant.
Hard objects rattled noisily against the inside of the collection drum.
I discarded all the floor mats without hesitation.
There was no chance they could be revived through cleaning.
Trying to save these would be an insult to the car’s designer.
The Studebaker GT Hawk was a fairly luxurious vehicle.
Its interior finish quality was especially high.
It used premium leather and aluminum generously, while the circular gauges that immediately evoked an aircraft cockpit were the highlight of the car.
Of course, that was when it had been new….
Fortunately, the dark-red carpeting beneath the mats was not in particularly bad condition.
The quality was incomparable to carpeting found in modern vehicles, so I decided that this had to be saved.
“I’m finally going to use this.”
I brought out the expensive steam cleaner that had been gathering dust in one corner of the warehouse.
Even used, it had cost more than a thousand dollars.
I had chosen this model because it could spray detergent simultaneously with high-temperature steam.
I diluted a powerful German detailing cleaner at a ratio of ten to one and began preheating the machine.
After the humming preheating sound, a green light clicked on.
Then I pulled the trigger on the steam gun.
I carefully passed it over the carpet from top to bottom as though ironing it.
Whoosh—
The short fibers flattened in one direction, leaving a clean strip as wide as the steam nozzle.
So this was its original color.
At the same time, the lost deep-red shade began returning vividly.
After repeating the steaming process several times, the peculiar smell of hot vapor commonly found in neighborhood laundries began to spread.
It felt as though not only the carpet but the inside of my nose was being purified.
After steaming, I cleaned every remaining corner by hand.
I diluted a dedicated cleaner with a neutral pH of around seven, which would not damage plastic or leather, applied it across the surfaces, and gently wiped everything with microfiber cloths.
I washed and reused each cloth two or three times, but the contamination was so severe that when I counted later, a total of twelve towels had died in service.
“Whew…. At least it looks somewhat better after cleaning.”
The interior looked empty without the seats, the headliner still hung in tatters, and the dashboard and leather remained unusable in their current condition.
Even so, it was far better than when I had first seen it inside the barn.
The headache-inducing odor had almost completely disappeared as well.
It’s already this late.
When I crawled out of the interior and straightened my back for the first time in several hours, the surroundings had already turned bluish.
All I had done today was transport the car and clean the interior, yet time had passed far too quickly.
I opened the trunk, both doors, and the engine compartment to allow air to circulate, then walked toward the food shelf.
I had already decided what to eat for dinner while steaming the interior.
A can of tuna, mayonnaise, and rice quickly prepared in the rice cooker.
Mixing those three together and crumbling seasoned seaweed, which was now easy to find in American supermarkets, over the top created an instant tuna-mayo rice bowl.
It somehow doesn’t feel entirely Korean, yet it still feels like I’m eating Korean food.
“Whine, whine!”
Dusty was losing his mind beside me over the rich aroma drifting through the air.
“No. A puppy could get seriously sick from eating this.”
I had only learned after raising him that dogs could eat surprisingly little of the food humans consumed.
After stroking Dusty’s neck several times, I poured out his kibble.
He alternated his gaze several times between the food in his bowl and the tuna-mayo rice I was eating, then began eating his own meal with a slightly dejected expression.
Crunch, crunch—
Meanwhile, I ate with one hand and scrolled through my phone with the other.
Arizona car interior restoration.
A long list of search results appeared on the screen.
{Desert Custom Seats}
“Give your old seats modern diamond stitching!”
{Neon Thread Interiors}
“We install LED accent strips!”
Every result was a flashy, glittering interior customization shop.
Replacing every old component with something modern and recovering everything in new leather was fast, clean, and in high demand.
By contrast, restoration that preserved original components was slow, tedious, and unprofitable.
However, my work was intended for people who valued that approach more.
People who were moved by real leather rather than vinyl, and genuine wood rather than plastic molded to imitate its grain.
[Radius: 200 miles]
Tap!
With no other choice, I widened the search radius.
The map expanded beyond Arizona’s border into New Mexico.
Hmm…. This one looks promising.
{Old Soul Upholstery}
I liked the name immediately.
It sounded somewhat old-fashioned, but that also gave the impression of experience.
Then I looked through the sample photographs.
“Wow….”
An exclamation escaped me.
There were endless images showing the polishing of old stainless-steel trim to restore its shine, the restoration of chrome rings around instrument gauges, and the repair of cracked clear coats on wooden panels.
I think I found it.
There was no need to look further.
I placed the last spoonful from my bowl into my mouth and immediately pressed the appointment button.
[To: Old Soul Upholstery]
[Subject: Inquiry Regarding Interior Restoration for a 1964 Studebaker]
“I would like the work performed with originality as the highest priority. Would it be possible to visit tomorrow morning?”
A short while later, my phone vibrated.
“You may come by ten in the morning.”
A brief, straightforward reply.
I already had a feeling that we would understand one another well.