Over the last few years there has been a lot of discussion, and lots of useful information, about the "browns" that were available for carpet over the years. This has extended to "beige" in a recent thread as well.
Unfortunately, for reference purposes, most of these threads have started off from a "for sale" thread mainly when someone is posting some brown/ beige/ tan / cinnamon carpet for sale and apart from bumping/ hijacking the thread the useful information often gets lost or after the sale the debate finishes only to start again with a different for sale post.
I have recently seen some different old pieces of "brown" carpet that Clyde has purchases from EASY and from Paul Chappell and compared it with the new brown that both Clyde has in one of his cars and I have in mine that I got from a find that Alex had a few years ago, to try to work out once and for all if there were both a "brown" and "tan" (maybe also called cinnamon in different markets) in 1973. The same debate about "brown" and "beige" in earlier cars has been going on in this post.
Franz had this brown carpet for sale in this post last year.
It is definitely brown, and has the same tan colored piping as my original carpet did but is much browner than I had in my car before it was replaced. That raised a question of whether mine had faded dramatically or was originally a different Brown to what Franz had for sale (and I now have in my car ). I have always thought it was a lighter tan color as i have see a number of cars here, some low mileage survivors, with a lighter tan colored carpet like this on a 43,000 mile 1971 car
Last year in this post Alex (911_2.2T) here offered the left over pieces of the carpet set he had when he and I both used it in our cars. This thread produced a lot of discussion about whether or not there was one or two "browns" in the early 70's whether this was accurate for 1973 etc.
Yesterday i had the chance to compare the carpet Clyde got from Paul Chappell recently (which has a part number and color code on it) with some darker brown carpet on the back of some seat backs he got from EASY (both the exposed bits and some that were protected from the sun.
the photo of Paul's piece is below with the 400 color code
That color is definite much different to the darker brown now in my car which is the same as what Alex was selling recently (below)
Alex's (and my) carpet has the white flecks through it a bit like the salt and pepper black carpet
However it also does not show the weave as well as the "pile" seems to cover it up unlike with the piece that came from Paul or the look of the carpet that was in my car before i replaced it, or indeed the look of the darker brown carpet Franz sold.
The pieces from EASY however have cleared up a significant piece of the issue in my mind. The next photos show a part of carpet hidden by the strap for the seat and the rest of the carpet piece on the back of the rear seat including some that was hidden away while on the car.
The difference in color between the protected part and the rest is easy to see and the part where the strap was still shows some white flecks of pile like on the more recent carpet.
This suggests that the color can fade dramatically over 40+ years and also the pile on the new carpet that hides the weave (and what I was worried about as not being "original looking") probably was how it started out. So maybe a number of cars that looked like they had a lighter brown interior may have indeed started with a darker one.
However that does not solve the "two browns" argument as the following pictures show
The color of the carpet from Paul is definitely completely different and is almost certainly the "tan" or maybe "cinnamon" depending on the market.
Looking at the color codes it can be seen that the brown one has code 401 in what looks like European handwriting (and Paul's is 400 which, to me, may or may not be European handwriting)
I looked in Peter Morgan's "original Porsche 911 book, which while it does have a few errors and omissions is the only reference book I have that has color codes and descriptions for carpet as well as the rest of the interiors.
It says in 1972/73 there was "needle loom" carpet in brown (401) and nylon velour carpet in "dark tan" (402). T's had the "special" nylon and E's and S's had Velour pile in black and brown although other colors were available to special order.
This, to me, confirms the two brown colors, although I'm not sure if the "400" color on Paul's piece is yet another brown or not (all the browns are 400's, blacks 700's, blue / greens 300's and maroons seem to be 000's) as for other material (leatherette, corduroy etc) the "tans" are 500 codes, so maybe it should have a 500 number on that piece rather than a 400 one.
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Originally Posted by fourteenten
