Lancia Monte Carlo Series 1

Lancia Monte Carlo Series 1

The Lancia Monte Carlo is a Pininfarina designed mid-engined sports car produced by Lancia in Italy from 1975 to 1981. Its styling is typical of the era with the introduction of the wedge shape. Pininfarina, an Italian design house renowned for designing for iconic car brands such as Maserati, Alfa Romeo, Ferrari as well as Lancia and more recently Volvo and Ford.

Lancia Monte Carlo Upholstery

Interior Upholstery

Humphries Weaving were contacted by the production company responsible for the filming of Quests series “Salvage Hunters Classic Cars”.  Curve Media’s requirement was to source a fabric for the interior of a 1970’s Lancia Monte Carlo.

Salvage Hunters restoration project had hit an issue when they discovered that the fabric required was out of production. They had investigated many options but were disappointed to discover that nobody was remanufacturing the particular fabric required. Curve Media sent us the smallest remnant of fabric, found on the underside of a headrest (hidden from the bleaching action of the sun).  It was ascertained that we would probably be able to recreate the fabric using our stock warps and wefts and so the film crew were despatched.

The crew, including their iconic presenter Drew Pritchard, descended on the Mill in September of 2019 and filming took place over two days.

Though the fabric seemed to be a simple basket or panama weave, this left our design team with a challenge to develop a fabric that was robust enough. A panama weave has the tendency for the weft to slip off the warp so the careful insertion of binder threads and intricate back binding enabled us to weave a loose float-based fabric which was robust enough for use in upholstering these car seats.

The scale, weave and colour of the design was achieved to a commercial tolerance using our well stocked warehouse of yarns. We wove this design on our natural cotton warp with a ruby worsted wool weft and a cotton binding pick in natural.

The Program

The program was aired on the 3^rd of February 2021 and it was only then that we managed to see the completed car. Unlike the car shown on the right, the fabric was used for many more areas including the door cards and parts of the dashboard. We welcome all classic car projects and are currently working on a number of new fabrics. You can see a clip from the show below.