I talked with Bob about these door pulls on Monday this week and it took some time for him to find a process that would work to reproduce them. In the end, each one is hand stitched in order to get them to come out as original. Based on the vendors he discussed the project with, the consensus after careful evaluation of some original samples of the part was that the factory must have done them the same way - without an automated process.
That must have been costly and is probably one of the reasons they were phased out during the 1971 model year in favor of the thinner version that appeared in the late 71s and 72-73 models as well. The stitching in those thinner version pulls is embossed using a mold.
Even the Chrysler 300 Club International, Inc tried to reproduce these with their fairly large resources (for the Hurst models) and failed completely and gave up as far as I can tell. I saw a sample of one of their efforts and it was pretty pathetic - way too thin and didn't look even close to the original ones.
So Bob deserves our gratitude for coming through with yet another item we need at prices that usually beat any competitors making the same parts on occasion like arm rest pads or the chrome bases that go along with them. Other sellers of those items charge twice as much.
I encouraged Bob to take on this project well over a year ago, so I hope you guys appreciate his efforts and step up to the plate and buy some. I do not yet know what he needs to charge to sell these and recover his investment costs.
Thank you Bob!!!
Wow, ABC did it! Fantastic. I'm a big fan of that company.
Thank you, Steve, for bird-dogging this effort with ABC, and it's great to see it finally happen. I also talked with Bob a few times, by phone and at Carlisle, and he was always upbeat that it would get done, starting with the saddle color first, and "maybe" doing others. I suggested white to make it easy to "SEM" them to any color, so we'll see.
When I got my car, it had NO pulls or hardware. Fortunately for me, Manny (70SportSuburban) was gracious enough to sell me two decent pulls (in black) and the necessary hardware, all at a very modest price. With several thin coats of SEM saddle and some rattlecan chrome, the refurbishment came out great.