'59 Merc Door Panels

[Stephenorf]

I have this Driver's side door panel off of my 1959 Mercury Monterey. It is in pretty rough shape. There are no aftermarket replacements for this year/make/model that I can find.

I'd like to "rebuild" the existing panel.

The alternative is to buy some vinyl and padding and recreate the vinyl from scratch. I'm sure I can cut the pattern, but not sure how to "melt" the contours and "melt/glue" the pieces of vinyl together.

The third alternative to to do my best to patch the existing door panel back together and use as-is until they completely fall apart.

Lastly, I could build completely new "plane-jane" door panels with a simple monochrome vinyl covering.

Option 1 is to "rebuild" the existing panel. I can get the backing board and cut it to the proper shape, including the cutouts for the handles and clips. My plan was to re-stretch the vinyl over the new board and go from there. But the old vinyl seems very stiff and seems to have shrunk/warped over the years. I want to keep the original design door panel to match the other door panels.

Does anyone have experience "rebuilding" a door panel?


Here's some pics of what I'm working with: