Jean-Philippe Duval never finished school. In France, it was required until sixteen, but he got out early, walked into a trade school, and made a life out of something that felt natural. He had no desire to turn wrenches for unhappy customers. Bodywork was a slow-motion hell of sanding, priming, waiting, and repeating. The results were too far into the future. But upholstery, that was something else. It was immediate. It was hands-on. It was the kind of work where a set of dedicated hours could turn a mess into something finished, something precise, something beautiful.
He started small, working on whatever came his way. Then a friend showed up with a 356. And another, becoming specialized before he even realized it. His wife asked him if he really thought there’d be enough of them left to keep going for twenty years. That was twenty-five years ago.
What draws Jean to these cars isn’t just the shape or the nostalgia or even the materials he gets to work with. It is the simplicity. A Porsche 356 can be taken apart in a day. If you have the tools and the patience, you can strip it to a shell without specialized equipment or some super secret factory-only technique, or an expensive factory set of tools. The seats come out with a few bolts. The door panels pop off after a handful of screws. The headliner is a known process. It is stretched over bows and tensioned into place. It was a car made to be serviced, something that can’t be said for most sports cars built in the last few decades.
Back when these interiors were first assembled, they were built to be used. Every stitch, every panel, every material choice was made with purpose. They were elegant but not indulgent, refined but never overdone. The first 356s were built in Gmünd, Austria, in a repurposed sawmill, and by the time production ramped up in Germany, the interiors were still an exercise in function over flair. Porsche outsourced much of the assembly, with coachbuilders like Reutter and Karmann handling the upholstery and bodywork. There was no hand-stitched leather, no excessive padding, no exotic materials. Seats were often covered in vinyl, with cloth or corduroy inserts. Everything was cut, sewn, and installed as quickly as possible, with patterns optimized for production, not perfection. Panels were backed with simple pressboard. Seams were glued and stapled in places unseen. A skilled German trimmer could knock out a full interior in a day.
That’s what Jean is undoing, and then redoing every time he starts a new project. He pulls everything apart, studies the seams, notes where things held up and where they failed, then builds it all back again, piece by piece. He sources materials from Germany, cuts everything by hand, and stitches it together with the same attention to detail as the original craftsmen, except now there is more time to refine every piece.The patterns are the same, but the precision is more cared after. The materials are closer to what Porsche would have used if they had the time. Perhaps.
The kind of people who bring their 356 to Jean-Philippe Duval understand this. They are not looking for restoration in the showroom sense. They want something that feels like it has always been there. No hard lines where new meets old. No traces of the work. Just an interior that fits the car’s story. When it is done, it looks like it never left.
