Customised Mercedes-Benz W108 Interior Retrim

Mercedes-Benz W108 Retrim:

The story starts with Dougie, who owns the Mercedes-Benz, when he visited d:class after hearing good reviews of our work. All of our staff were fascinated by his W108 which had a brand new air ride suspension system and was also fresh from paint. To our delight, Dougie booked in with us and we awaited his car's return so we could get stuck in.

Whilst you're here, check out our video of the W108!

Working from the ground up, we started the retrim by applying a large amount of sound deadening to the chassis floor pan. We use Dynamat Europe for all of our big projects, including both of the Build Battle cars.

For the carpet, we have used a grey box weave carpet with red leather binding to match the rest of the interior. All of which are custom-made and glued down on top of the Dynamat panels.

One of the main targets for this build was to recreate an OEM front bench seat. This was an option from the factory but given the age of these cars, it would be incredibly hard to source one. As we have such skilled fabricators in the d: class team, we set about recreating our own with tilt and slide features.

Owner Dougie sat down with David and had a lengthy discussion about what leather to pick for the vehicle. Oxblood red distressed leather was selected and ordered. For the seat centres, we had the leather debossed with period-correct basket weave patterning. Creating these seats from absolutely nothing is nothing short of a masterpiece. They are the definition of tailor-made upholstery.

The dashboard is next, another stand-out key feature of this restoration. We were tasked with finding a home for a large entertainment system screen. Dougie wished it to be in the car so he would have his modern comforts like Bluetooth audio and satellite navigation. He also requested the screen to be tucked away when desired, this involved us designing and fabricating a type of hinge to be able to travel without contacting the dashboard. It also had to be able to uphold the weight of the device at all times.

Last but not least is the bespoke door cards featured in this W108. The original door card woods were totally warped and damaged, this is totally normal for Mercedes of this era and age. We keep an archive of original door card templates from all types of Mercedes-Benz.

Once the new door card woods had been created, it was onto trimming these with the same red distressed leather. A big thank you to UK Hide for supplying us with this gorgeous leather. We like to work with the best companies, so we cannot recommend them enough.