Heads up Cougar fans, New 1968 Cougar XR7 door panels are now available!
A good friend of mine ordered a set from SMS Interiors (in Oregon) for a 1968 Cougar GTE project he is finishing up.
I went by to look at them, and they look amazing, just like NOS new. They have the correct 2 textures of vinyl, heat pressed stitching, correct map pockets with Cougar logo, new backer boards, etc. They don’t come with the top metal installed, but that should be simple to do.
Best I have ever seen. See photo.I’m sure they weren’t cheap, but if you want the best - this is it. Maybe if WCCC was to order several sets, the price would come down. Hopefully this is the start of reproduction door panels for ALL classic Cougars.
Best Regards, Scott Taylor - Taylor Restorations
Nugget Gold please! that looks beautiful!
Wow!! Very nice.
It looks like the Cougar on the map pocket is facing the wrong way. When installed the cat is supposed to face forward on both sides.
They look very nice.
On the map pockets, they may have installed them on the wrong sides. I will check and follow up. Hey West Coast - are you interested in providing these to the Cougar public?
These have been available for years but the price is up there. SMS is not the easiest to deal with and often times takes years (as in two) to complete just one set. They do not give much of a discount for ordering more than one pair. I am sure others here can expound on their experiences. If WCCC cannot bring advantage of price and service to the table there is no reason for us to get in the middle. Too bad as they are a bicycle rides distance from our location.
I guess you didn’t see my thread on my experience with SMS, Scott. I had some new 68 Standard panels made. They turned out very nice. But it took 9 months with virtually no communication and the cost was about $600, with me providing the new backer boards and my original metal rails.
I’m not sure how you’re supposed to attach the metal top rails after the vinyl has been installed on the backer boards. It’s better to attach them to the backer boards before installing the vinyl. The best thing is to send in your old panels and let them do it.
I don’t think it’s viable for WCCC to buy a bunch of sets in different styles and colors, put them on a shelf and hope that someone buys them. SMS makes them on a one-off basis, and I doubt they give a meaningful wholesale / bulk discount. It makes more sense for individuals to go directly through them, and that way they can be made exactly how you want them. In my case, I was able to get them color matched to my new upholstery, which is a little different from the original color.
It’s great that someone is able to reproduce these panels, and they do a nice job, but just know what you’re getting into in terms of time and cost. They will also do the rear side panels, FYI.
Lastly, it looks like they don’t quite have the right mold for the map pocket logo, if you want to be 100% correct. This is what that should look like:
Anyway… despite my reservations, I am happy with mine and glad there’s an option for new panels.
Based on the reviews it appears to be a coin flip whether you’ll be thrilled with your new panels/fabric or feel that you were ripped off.
very much so and the lead times are a bit much. I will love to have some new panels like that but I will do something else instead of risk doing business with them
Watch our site, this site and ebay and you can still find grade A pairs for about $600 that are plug and play. I got lucky a couple years ago and found a mint pair from a rusty 1968 xr7, low mile car out of Canada that came with arm rests, pull straps and all the hdw for $300 plus $150 shipping.
https://secure.cougarpartscatalog.com/store/Search.aspx?SearchTerms=C8W%20xr7%20door%20panel
I had the ones on B3Cat made by a local trim shop. They used a set of parchment originals as a guide and found the correct materials from their supply base. The result is fantastic and I tested it by having some very knowledgeable Cougar folks at Carlisle look at the original door panels on BBCat and the new door panels on B3Cat as they were parked next to each other. It’s hard to tell the difference. I probably did spend about $600.00 on them but it took only a couple of weeks to get them done.
Pics or it didn’t happen 
How’d they do the different textures and the “stitched” border? Splice together different materials? Or were they able to make a mold to heat press the patterns in?
Here is the B3Cat page on my website. The one interior picture that shows a door panel isn’t good enough to answer your question so I’ll have to see if I have some better ones at home. If not, I’ll take some once I can get in the garage (snow removal required for that) where the Cougar is wintering.
To refresh my memory I called Justin, the owner of the trim shop (Seamless Customs in Leicester, MA). He told me he found the materials from one of his regular suppliers (he uses SMS as a supplier of materials but doesn’t think these came from there). They stitched the outer and inner sections together. The stitched area is where you can see the difference, but the grains and patterns of the inner and outer are virtually identical to the originals.
They have books of swatches going back to the 50’s, at least. They are a fairly high-end shop doing a lot of custom work and classic interiors or convertible tops. For the door panels, they matched the original samples to the swatches in the book until they found the right materials and that’s what they ordered in.
Here are a couple more pictures of the door panels. Again, not closeup enough to see the details but the best views I have until I can get out to the garage to take some better ones.
They look good from here! Pretty impressive that your upholstery shop was able to recreate those by hand.
Those look really nice. Even the purist in me would live with those as opposed to originals that weren’t mint.
Cool, they did a nice job on those! Now fix your crooked door handles… 
That is disappointing to hear about SMS. You would think that if someone would order let’s say 10 pairs of door panels all the same, rather than making them one at a time, that SMS could batch them all and make them much faster and offer a better price. They are the only ones that have the tooling to make them right, and they don’t seem to want to do it. There are very few people who are willing to pay big $$ AND wait a LONG time to get them. Big $$ and ship quickly - OK. Less $$ and wait a long time - OK for some people too. I guess it’s back to looking for 50+ year old good used ones…