The interior of this car is a work in progress, but there's a plan, man... Preservationists, restorers and purists, avert your eyes! Cars are meant to be enjoyed, and driven.

The goal is clear in my head, and will hopefully come out as I imagine it, but likely it won't. It never does! But I'm not complaining.

Mobius and Japanese anime; better yet, Taiyo Matsumoto's work (eg. Tekkonkinkreet), a Japanese anime artist who spent time in France with Mobius' cohort, making a perfect hybrid.

Super Milk Chan and late 1950's black and white sci-fi movies. That's the theme. The Cold War, radiation, The Atom, LSD. The Beats.

The exterior will be more to the Mobius end, the interior more Milk Chan (who is not cute; she's a cruel and selfish pervert and government agent).

• Fitting a Mooneyes steering wheel.

By the way, writers and graffiti artists use these spectacular aerosol paints made by Montana and Molotow; I get them from a local hip hop store, 33Third here in Los Angeles. This stuff makes Krylon look like kids watercolors. Dries hard, fast, hundreds of fantastic colors, dozens of spraytop patterns, and you can even put it into markers. Cheap too. I'm using nothing else, and all color on the interior of this car is based around Montana Shock Green, layered with Grasshopper, and various silvers and clears.

October, 2008. OK, starting to come together here. There's enough shiny aluminum to get the look across now. It's not hard to work with, but has a few particular issues: dents and scratches are really obvious. It rattles! Door panels are traditionally (in this era) made from pressed organic stuff (paper, fabric, etc) which is inherently sound-damping. It took some effort to find all the rattles and damp them with glued-on neoprene foam.

The top-of-door trim (it's plastic) was cracked in three places. I scrubbed it all up, cleaned out the cracks in the plastic and superglued them shut. I then roughed up the interior and epoxied mesh metal across it to take out the stress, epoxied the cosmetic cracks, sanded and painted (Montana Shock Green with a silver mist and a couple coats of clear). New fuzzies and door seals.

It was a lot of work to get all the layers of crappy paint off the door edges! Major PITA! That was more work than fitting the metal. No way I was gonna unmount the doors; alignment is perfect and I didn't want to re-do that.

The center console alone was a dozen hours of invisible work. It's made of molded fiberglas, but covered with a molded-on textured plastic or paint that cracked and flaked all over, and bonded poorly. I scraped it all off carefully with a razor-sharpened putty knife, epoxy filled the gouges, reattached all the broken tabs, reconstructed the crushed rear corner, and painted it all metallic silver (Montana paints) and layers of clear. It's not obvious here (I'll take more photos) but I replaced all the ribbed aluminum with 26-gauge stainless sheet. Tokidoki Cactus is unfortunately blocking the view now.

The lid for the storage compartment is so far unmolested, but it will be replaced with a top padded in silver (seat) vinyl. My dog Molly likes to squat on it and walk over it, and it would make a nice armrest anyways. The interior of the compartment will be lined in green fur, removable for cleaning. Sahara currently sits under the dash as a sort of escort. I wanted it on the rear deck but it looks like the sun will ruin it.

Note the snazzy gas pedal! I'll later do the same to the clutch and brake pedals when I get around to finding new pads.

There's a lot of detail around the console needing attention. The shift lever escutcheon is horribly pitted and needs replacing; the plastic sliders are crap

Please, Molly, don't pick up that tire iron...

May 2008. Seats got done! Dropped them off a local shop (get name here!) with insanely metalflake vinyl I bought in the fabric district.

Carpet and upholstery basics are done, a multitude of details await, but the retro-anime look starting to take shape. The insanely metalflake vinyl couldn't be any better (well, not hot and sticky would be a start...). It's almost blinding.

At night, the interior lights (surplus NOS aircraft marker lights) make the metalflake dazzle. The Mooneyes steering wheel is a perfect match; alas, the paint color I used is somewhat off, I may redo some of it.

The shop that did the work wrapped up the Twin Stick shifter nicely -- apparently I forgot to tell them there is a center console, and it's slightly alarming that they didn't call to ask me.

However they did great work, and the carpet is edged with silver seat vinyl. The original seats had rows of stitching 1" apart, but I decided to leave that out, in keeping with the broad, clear expanses of polished aluminum.

January 2008. I did a big burst of interior work in a month or two; the dash and instrument cluster got cleaned up, painted, and I got started on accessorizing (I could not resist). Accessories at this point are the tach, and the wonderful Vac-O-Meter, complete with worthless "miles per gallon" slide rule. Very 1964. Face is translucent, backlit, at night very pretty. Colors match! When I overhauled the radio, I made it's dial match the rest of the color scheme. This is a 1962 radio, with two tubes, not the 1963 "all transistor".

I've been waiting to use this on something... other items will tie into a late 1950's/early 1960's Cold War theme.

One of the tachometers I got from the Barney Navarro auction. The redline is in women's fingernail polish, and around 6500 rpm. The 195.6OHV in this car would shed internal parts at those revs; 6500 worked OK on the turbo 199ci.

A close up of the headlamp, wiper and heater controls. Haven't yet labelled them. That's more Montana paints; Grasshopper, Silver, in layers, with a very heavy coat of clear.

Didn't take any "before" pictures of the headliner, but it was a total mess. When I got the car it was sagging such that it rubbed on your head. It's one of those one-piece fiberglas jobs that's basically unrepairable. Not having any choice I repaired it; it was a pain in the butt and didn't come out very well; I'm not sure how I'd approach it if I had to do this again.

Basically I propped it into approximate shape, and used fiberglas resin and mat to shape and stiffen it. The problem is the exact shape is fairly important, as it's supported only be the edge trim. Even after repair it's far from flat, but that's partly why I chose to use fun fur. The other part is I simply like it; it's clean, quiet, good color, nice texture, easy to work with, and most importantly, it hides flaws. Took a lot of mat, resin and grinding to get it close enough. The fur went on easily enough with Loctite brand headliner spray glue. I left the edges loose and long to tuck them into the mounting trim (see below).

I simply trimmed it in place, easy enough, and tucked it into the support trim with a putty knife. The trim was originally fabric covered, but I sanded it and sprayed it with Montana's Shock Green.

Came out pretty good overall. The headliner shell is pretty ratty, but stable and strong. I actually had to contact-cement it to the roof rib, in-place, as it sagged in the center because I got the shape wrong. Should be a permanent fix though.

Though it's missing a ton of tiny detail, the overall look is coming together; Moebius' AIRTIGHT GARAGE, a juxtaposition of aircraft, zeppelin, and anime.

This is the passenger side rear section, with the door open and quarter window rolled down. Such a strange and beautiful detail!

These are just shots of the stripped interior hardtop construction, showing how it appears to be a simple buildup onto sedan components. A very simple design with excellent finish quality. That's completely unrestored; when I stripped the interior I washed it was soapy water and hosed it off. WYSIWYG.

The rear panels are so-far just mocked up. There's mismatching around the edges, no welting, and a lot of cosmetic detailing.

Original drivers-side rear interior panels; these are in pretty good shape, the rest were completely trashed.

The drivers-side rear with new panels fitted, not trimmed and no welting etc. The light on the sail panel is an old NOS surplus aircraft skin light, with glass lens. This is looking down from the back of the drivers seat down to the gap between the rear seat cushion and side panel.

New rear deck, the old cardboard was so totally rotted it came out in moldy shreds. There is a factory-provided gap between the rear seat upright and the wheel well. I can almost stick my arm in there; trunk noise and smells travel freely. Another view of the above.