<VV> early Monza bench Seat

[Tony Underwood]

A while back, there was a brief bit of commentary about early Monzas 
that had bench seats.  I kinda stumbled into a slight discovery about 
a '61 Monza seat that I put in my '60 4-door to have something to 
occupy space up front while its seats get restored at an upholstery 
shop here in town that's run by a grizzly looking guy who does 
vintage car upholstery work.


Yes, the pigpen '60 4-door is getting new upholstery (seats and door 
panels) and yes it's gonna be the original 1960 style and color, or 
at least pretty close, close enough that a layman wouldn't know the 
difference.   But enough about that for the moment.


I've had this '61 Monza bench seat for years now, brought it back 
from a show... Hank K. gave it to me simply for coming to get it.  He 
had it in his vehicle... he helped me put it into my Jeep Cherokee 
etc. still upside-down as it came out of Hank's vehicle.   I never 
actually saw the seat right-side-up until I pulled it out of storage 
here, and I'd never actually looked at the covers except what you'd 
see from the bottom and hadn't bothered to check condition seeing as 
how Hank had said it was intact and together, just faded and worn... 
which it was, once I got a look at it right-side-up.

It was indeed a red (originally, now a bleary maroon hue) '61 Monza 
bench seat with *cloth* inserts.  From the looks of it, the seat was 
original and didn't appear to have ever been repaired or 
recovered.  Considering its age it's in surprising shape.


I had never seen an early Monza bench seat with cloth inserts 
although I knew there had been a few made at one time.   So, by any 
chance does anyone know roughly (ballpark percentage-wise) just how 
many of these seats with the cloth inserts may have been made?   Like 
I said, I'd never seen one with the cloth inserts.

It's comfortable...  I'd slated it for eventual use in my Lakewood 
which has a disreputable front bench that really will need serious 
work to straighten out, and all this '61 seat needed is covers.   I'm 
wondering how many original '61 Monza bench seats with the cloth 
inserts are still in existence...?   Now I'd feel kinda bad about 
reupholstering it with '61 700 covers.

tony..