The Go-To Trimmer
Think of an older Florida, away from the glitz of Miami and the high rises of most anywhere, a rural part of the state about an hour north of Tampa. Downshift from the interstate, to a state road, to a local one and then a couple more notches down. Finally you end up on little more than a path: two parallel narrow tracks of sand, worn down with a hump in the center green with plant life. Trees and vines overhang it. In the sunshine, it’s something out of a Carl Hiassen novel. At night, more like Stephen King.
Navigate it and you’ll come to an open field with mature trees and a pond in the distance. A unique round hurricane-resistant house is flanked by a red barn-style structure, where you’ll find Jim Wallace, renowned supplier of leather seat cover sets, carpet sets and a few other interior replacement parts for 1960s Lincolns and Continental Mark IIs.
Leather Restorations in Webster, Florida is chock full of materials: leather, obviously; an enormous roll of felt; multiple templates in time-worn cardboard and new plexiglass festooned with notes; various coatings; springs; bucket and bench seats; carpet; trunk set “Continental Star” inserts and many others. There are scissors, sewing machines, computers and enough machinery for a half-dozen trimmers. In an alcove is a large U-shaped workbench piled high with, at the moment, a “tuxedo” style seat cover in progress, Jim at a chair in the center of it all. You get the sense that anything that starts with a cow and ends up in a car could be made here.
Spry and engaging, Jim traces his automotive involvement back to its US source, Detroit. His dad spent his entire career in automotive “trim” – a term he prefers to “upholstery” –for three shops around Detroit. Jim shadowed his father at work, washed cars there in the summers and in high school dove into wood working and cabinet making. Facing a choice between that and trim work, he (lucky for us) chose car interiors, and worked for a series of companies around the Motor City.
He started at, of all places, “Seat Cover King,” which sold the clear vinyl seat protectors popular in the 1960s. Then, thankfully, moved on to a succession of three other Detroit-area trim shops and one prototyping facility. There, he made the first master pieces for the molds for the early 1970s Lincoln door pulls. He worked on late-model cars, post-war collector vehicles and even Duesenbergs, Packards, Auburns and Bugattis. A Hawaii vacation awakened a desire for warmer climes, and catching bronchitis upon his return seemed like a sign. When he heard that a shop in Largo, Florida was looking for a trimmer, Jim packed his bags.
Thirty-five cars, dating from the ‘20s, awaited restoration there. More Auburns and Packards, plus Cadillacs, Dodge Brothers, Rolls-Royces, Cords. A half dozen of their completed cars would be shown each year at the AACA meets. If one of them won first place, he got a $100 bonuses. $50 for second. Jim pocketed an extra $500-600 each year as a result. He left that shop when they switched into making fiberglass boat-tail Auburn replicas, for one in St. Petersburg that mostly specialized in Rolls-Royces.
Jim went to one more shop in Florida but by then had worked for others for many years, amassing a wealth of experience in trim for Ford, GM, Chrysler, Rolls-Royce/Bentley, Porsche and defunct pre-war marques. While there, a former colleague called with a tip: across the street from him, there was a 1200 square foot building for rent in Pinellas Park, Florida. That was the start of Leather Restorations in 1984. At first, he specialized in Porsches.
At a World of Wheels Car Show in Tampa, Jim ran into Chris Dunn of Lincoln Land. Chris sent him top and interior work and they became friends. Chris introduced him to Real Lemery, a trimmer from Connecticut who had developed patterns for Lincolns: seats, tops, carpet sets, trunk liners, and doors. Jim thought that Real made the best out-of-the-box kits for Lincolns he had seen, and Real was impressed by Jim’s work. They hit it off based on mutual respect for each other’s talents, and Jim later bought Real’s patterns.
During a tour of the shop, Jim demonstrates how lines are transferred from templates to leather and cut. The degree of precision comes down to not only those lines but even on which side of the line the cut is made. He shows an old seat with latex foam under the cover, explaining that latex lasts indefinitely as long as air can’t get to it. The yellow dust you may see in an older seat is a sign that’s happening.
Other changes in recent years have reduced the quality of interiors, most notably the modernization of leather tanning processes. Some of the chemicals traditionally used in tanning leather were environmentally nasty but more modern methods with friendlier chemicals don’t yield as satisfactory a final product.
Another trend Jim grapples with is the consolidation of suppliers. Most automotive carpet now comes from only one source. During the pandemic, supply issues meant he couldn’t offer certain color choices. That huge roll of felt, used for trunk liner sets, was one of twenty-five, and that was the smallest quantity he could buy. It’s becoming harder for independent craftsmen to acquire the needed materials. Jim is lucky to have good long-term relationships with quality raw material suppliers – that ability to source is part of what customers get when buying from him.
This is hand-craft, the quiet stitching, thread through leather. But Jim has the mind of an engineer and turns it to other products for 1960s Lincoln owners. He collaborates with a neighbor who has expertise in ABS plastic & vacuum forming (and classic cars). Jim uses him for computer issues and they’re working on reproducing plastic under-dash panels, trunk panels and seat-plastic parts. They should be ready late in 2022 and are sure to find a ready market.
Jim’s home is a few hundred feet from his shop. His wife of 34 years Carlene manages the books. Orders come in by phone (727-525-5523) and email (60sLincolns@gmail.com). He works on what he likes, close to his family in a setting that pleases him. “I’ve worked most of my life in car interiors,” he says, and clearly, it’s made him happy.
There are advertisements – we’ve all seen them – that hawk some “luxury” product, usually with a European name – featuring an image of a wizened craftsman painstakingly cobbling, fitting, stitching, assembling, burnishing a product we are encouraged to purchase, in part on the strength of that image. You’re supposed to imagine a rich heritage, of skills passed down through generations. It’s almost always an illusion, created by an actor or sketch artist. The product is made in China, or some other country half a globe away, or if it’s actually made in the USA, or Europe, it’s probably on the 2 a.m. shift or by a robot. Here, here in Florida, USA, “down a secondary road that severely shows its age,” (as Jimmy Buffett sang) the ad’s myth meets a charming reality. Still just a phone call (and a waiting list) away, the genuine article, for a fair price, in reasonable time. It goes out in a set, in a box, to a buyer a thousand miles away, to become part of a show-winning 1960s Lincoln Continental, after a man with a wealth of experience unmatched by his competitors and scarcely imaginable to most of his customers, who embodies the image in that advert, pads out to his workshop in the morning, sewing together leather and backing as he has for decades.
©️2023 David Moyer
This article originally appeared in Lincoln and Continental Comments, the print magazine of the Lincoln and Continental Owners Club. To subscribe, go to https://lcoc.org/lincoln-continental-comments-2/