Car Rescue 101.1

MANILA, Philippines - The recent storms that ravaged majority of Northern Luzon taught us all a lesson or two in preparedness. I must admit, like James Deakin, who last week wrote about how to get a car back in respectable running condition, I too was caught flat-footed when the flood waters started to rise. But while James’ trusted Mazda 323’s engine got the raw end of the deal, my Cefiro merely had a wicked carpet drenching. When I asked him to write about getting his car back in shape, I knew it would be an article written with the passion of a first hand flood victim. When I decided that I too would write about how to get one’s car’s interiors back in respectable condition, I knew as well that I’d be writing from the heart.

See, here’s where I’m coming from. My buddy the Cefiro has been my constant companion for the better part of eight years. So much so that when it was time to get a new car, I simply decided to bite the financial bullet and keep my trusty steed as a “coding car”. In fact, while Ondoy was raging, the Cefiro was in the shop getting a tune up. Not that it desperately needed one, but I just felt it deserved one – that’s what you call car loving. When it came home from the shop after the tantrum that Ondoy threw, however, I was informed that the flood waters crept into its interiors. Damn straight it got flooded! The stench and humidity was so thick that I almost felt Patrick Ewing himself perspired on the darn thing!

Given the situation (the owner of the shop had his home flooded, so I couldn’t bare to pass on the blame to him), I knew I had to come to my car’s rescue. Like James, I turned to the best person I knew to address the situation. And while mechanical know-how is Pacho Blanco’s forte, Babes Rojas is our interior guy. Babes runs Leder Interia, one of the country’s best automobile interior restoration shops. I came to him with a strict budget – thus a complete interior upgrade was out of the question. But restoring my car’s interiors to respectability (or anyone else’s for that matter) need not be expensive, after all. Babes, real trooper that he is, gave me a quick walk through on how to work that interior back to shape on a budget…

His first rule is: there are no shortcuts. A drenched interior deserves a thorough cleaning because cutting corners tends to compound one’s woes further down the line. Thus Babes warns anyone who wants a complete interior makeover to be ready to part with his vehicle for at least two weeks – the first of which will be devoted to simply airing and drying the vehicle and its interiors, which includes carpets and seats. The second week – or at the very least five working days – are spent reupholstering everything from the flooring to the seats to the ceiling.

Now, if like me your only problem is a soiled floor carpet set-up, then count your blessings. Such a job for a five seater sedan will cost you around P6,000 to P8,000 – depending on the material you intend to use. Ceilings – especially those with sunroofs – tend to cost a bit more at P8,000 to P10,000. If your seats were hit, then be ready to spend anywhere from P14,000 to P40,000. That’s a bit steep, I know, but watching the folks at Leder Interia not just reupholster but also re-treat the rust-filled metal frames made me understand the extent of work done on car seats. Extremely tedious and downright meticulous, it’s the kind of specialty work worth the hard-earned money.

Babes’ best piece of advice came towards the end of my short visit to the Leder Interia shop. While many people might be apprehensive about spending on car interiors, here’s fact, the longer you wait, the more the seepage is bound to create rust in places you can’t see. Fabric and leather is, after all, only part of a car’s interior. Rain drenched interiors need to be aired out immediately and treated for rust problems as soon as one can afford to part ways – if only temporarily – with their prized four-wheel possessions. Remember the old adage: an once of prevention is better than a pound of cure.