Is your vehicle sporting a sun-dimmed dashboard? A lacerated leather driver’s seat? A Kool-Aid-colored carpet stain?
Take heart. It’s not the end of the road for your car’s resale value. At least not if JoAnn Foster, Larry Simons, and Mike Orlando and his father, Frank, have anything to say about it. They run three of the automotive interior repair operations in the Chicago area.
Foster is the founder and president of Creative Colors International, a Tinley Park firm that repairs and redyes leather and fabric upholstery, dashboards and automobile carpeting.
Simons owns America’s Best Colormate in Morris, which dyes carpet and repairs plastic trim, dashboard and door-panel cracks. And the Orlandos, a son and father team, own Ace Auto Tops & Upholstery, which stitches new seat-cover panels into place.
Now in its 18th year, Foster’s company has elevated auto upholstery and carpet repairs to an art, a status borne out by the 192 car dealerships and auto body shops that use CCI for interior auto repairs.
And though 90 percent of CCI’s business is performed for dealers, Foster and her 19 technicians work for private owners as well.
“Last week, we had a ’62 Eldorado convertible, which was gorgeous, and a ’57 T-Bird,” she said recently. “The T-Bird had a hole in the vinyl dash and the dash was faded. We repaired the hole and redyed the entire dashboard.
“On the Eldorado, the door panels were badly faded from the sun. We restored them to their original color. The leather seats had to be redyed and repairs made to the leather.”
Of course, a car doesn’t have to be vintage to merit CCI’s attention. The firm works on plenty of ordinary autos marred by burn holes and upholstery tears, gouges in leather dashboards, faded door panels and stained carpeting.
CCI has grown steadily since its founding in 1980 because dealers and owners know a flaw-free interior boosts resale value. And CCI’s services set car owners back a fraction of the cost of replacing seats, dashboards and door panels.
“Compared to replacement, the savings can be 75 to 90 percent,” Foster says. “For instance, the cost of replacing a leather seat can be $5,000 or more. For us to repair and redye the seat would cost $275 to $500.”
CCI has 18 “mobile units”–vans with electric generators, compressors and all the tools of the upholstery- and carpet-repair trade, allowing the repair show to be taken on the road. About 99 percent of CCI’s repair jobs are done on-site, said Foster. But owners also can bring their cars into the CCI garage at 5550 W. 175th Street by appointment.
Generally, a customer can get work done within 24 hours. The time it takes to make the repair can vary from 15 minutes to two hours depending on the problem and whether vinyl, leather or fabric is being fixed.
The most common problems CCI handles are leather steering wheels, which tend to fade from handling.
Leather seats also wear out as drivers and passengers enter and exit daily. “Holes get worn in the leather,” said Foster. “We’ll repair the leather and dye the whole seat back to its original color.”
Another common problem is the deep-seated carpet stain, which most often turns up in mini-vans and family cars. CCI technicians generally lift the stain and redye the carpet.
Then there are rips, cuts and burn holes in upholstery. “I love fabric because it gives us a chance to electrostatically apply fibers back into a hole or rip,” said Foster. “We’re actually doing flocking to the original fabric seats. And we can repair multi-color and patterned fabric upholstery, making it difficult to tell where the holes and tears were.”
The repair technique, whether used on vinyl (30 percent of jobs), leather (30 percent) or fabric (40 percent), melds science and art. That’s why Foster continually experiments with new ways to make repairs virtually undetectable.
CCI also makes repairs on corporate jets, riverboat casinos and the inventories of furniture retailers such as Bay, Dania, Darvin, Harlem and Wickes, as well as representatives of Natuzzi, a manufacturer of leather furniture.
Costs can range from $35 to $150 to repair a fabric seat, from $35 to $100 for repairing and redying a leather driver’s seat and from $35 to $65 for redying a leather steering wheel.
Kevin Henry of South Holland recently bought a 1976 Cadillac Eldorado convertible with badly cracked dashboard panels. He went to a junk yard and bought replacement panels, but their cream color didn’t match his car’s copper interior. CCI redyed the panels for $100. “They look absolutely beautiful,” said Henry.
The most frequent repair at America’s Best Colormate in Morris is fixing cigarette burn holes. The 14-year-old firm also dyes carpet and repairs plastic trim and dashboard and door panel cracks, said owner Simons, who got into the auto upholstery business when he couldn’t find a job teaching school. He answered a newspaper ad in Davenport, Iowa, for work in a similar franchise. He bought the franchise after a year and went out on his own six years after that.
“I try to not only match the color but also match the grain texture of the vinyl or leather in a seat,” said Simons.
Like CCI, America’s Best Colormate uses a mobile repair unit to service its client roster of 20 automobile dealerships and private individuals. “I try to meet individuals at the car dealerships where I’m working, if it’s fairly close to them,” said Simons.
America’s Best Colormate recently repaired a 2-inch tear in the vinyl on the seat of Lee Ann Blackburn’s 1995 Plymouth Neon. “You can’t even tell there was a tear in the first place,” said Blackburn of Morris, who was referred to Simons by an auto repair shop.
Expect to pay $30 to $75 for fabric seat repairs, and $55 to $90 to have a carpet redyed.
Ace Auto Tops & Upholstery in Norridge has been in the automotive interior repair business for 44 years and three generations. Grandfather Sam Orlando learned the trade at Packard and opened his own shop in 1918. The Orlandos use a different method of repairing seats than CCI or Colormate.
“The average seat (cover) is made up of 15 to 20 parts or panels,” said Mike Orlando. “We obtain replacement panels direct from the factory and sew them back into the seat.”
The company also replaces foam-backed headliners, convertible tops and yellowed ragtop backlights. About 80 percent of the firm’s seat repair work is on fabric, with the remaining 20 percent on leather. Charges range from $75 to $100 for fabric repairs and from $125 to $135 for leather repairs.
Simons and Orlando both do some work with dealers, though Simons prefers not to make house calls.
A friend who had had a convertible top repaired referred Diane Gabl of Norridge to Ace Auto Tops & Upholstery. Gabl burned a large cigarette hole in the passenger seat of her ’94 Honda Civic. Ace replaced the top of the seat. “They did it so well I couldn’t even tell it had been repaired.”
