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That is interesting how the sun visors disintegrated but yet the headliner was ok. My armrests are still soft and pliable, I just had to really clean them due to the years of elbows and forearms constantly touching them. They were pretty dark and black. I used a gentle mixture of Dawn soap and warm water and just gently rubbed them with a lint free cloth until the red started to appear. My headliner and sun visors are perfect in this car thankfully. The STE...not so much. The California desert pretty much baked it's interior. I'm SO THANKFUL that the International has such a nice interior. It's part of the reason why it's a 1 of 1 car. I'm actually restoring the front seats in it right now. The side bolster on the driver's seat is worn out. I'll post pics soon. I have all the hard pieces figured out and collected on the STE. It will be pricey though but I'll do a little at a time. The rear seat headrests and upper top portion of the seat will need to be reupholstered. The front seats are in great condition and just need to be deep cleaned. Same goes for the carpet. Got a new dash pad and found some really nice door panels with perfect door panels. I posted in my thread about all these parts being found. The biggest win was finding a perfect set of door speaker grills and the lenses for the door lamps. Took me years to find those! The original door armrests and the ones I pulled from a junkyard STE...again, not sticky or gooey at all. Pliable and very nice with no cracking or discoloration. I really lucked out there.

The tint definitely would have helped prevent the interior from fading by blocking a lot of the UV rays. But the melting issue is definitely a new one for me when it comes to a 1st gen W. Can’t say I’ve ever seen that happen before….but perhaps the time has come for some of these issues to show up. With the way that car has been treated, I’d expect to have heard other reports of this happening over the years on cars down south years ago if it was common. This is what’s making me think this is more of a chemical reaction and/or a natural breakdown that’s occurring that can’t be stopped with tint or climate controlled storage. Slightly different situation, but my old 88 Regal used different headliner material on the sunvisors than on the headliner itself. The material used on the sunvisors was the same one used on the earlier 80s GMs that was very prone to sagging. By 13 years old, the sunvisors were sagged and the foam material was completely broken down and rotted out. The actual headliner was perfectly fine though, and the foam backing was still holding up well when I scrapped it around 2008.

It's very possible, tint does block most UV. That tint looks awesome! I can't get over that you don't like it. I personally hate clear windows in everything. I mean, I really hate it, maybe more than you hate fake DRL headlights. I've seen some people get 35-50% tint and I'm even like, "what's the point?" Getting my Fleetwood tinted is the first thing I'd like to do to it. 35% is legal limit here, but I'm planning to take the risk on 20% like I did on the 94 convertible. I'd meant to take my 89 back to get the front windows done, but never got around to it. Probably should have, if it's indeed UV causing it, but it could very well be a combination of temperature and age as well. The dash vinyl, for some reason, has held up fine. I drove screws into it to un-warp it about 30-years ago, and it's stayed un-warped this whole time. They do make clear tint just to block UV. I was thinking to have that done on the Fleetwood's windshield. It does have a slightly bluish color to it, though. I don't think tint hurts the factory look. Lots of car ads portray them with tinted windows because it looks so much better.

My International sat outside for a good part of it's life. But, the original owner had the windows tinted and even though I don't like it, it saved it's red interior. My armrests aren't gooey yet or breaking down from what I can tell. Maybe the tint helped with this? If I drive it to work, I also put the windshield screen up primarily to protect my repaired non warped dash pad. I'd like to someday have the tint removed and then just have the clear UV protected tint added. I want a factory look but with the added UV protection.