Be sure to check the business history of any 'sample" sending business. They could have books and books of the old fabric selector books that the upholstery shops used to get and cut samples out of that. Some places will then sell you an amount and you'll hear back in a few months that they actually had run out and will have to remanufacture the material which they rarely if ever do and never to the original manufacturer's quality.
Check the business history before you spend money. I've been burned on that kind of deal before with a business I mistakenly trusted because they had some amount of fame. They were just in the business of collecting money, not providing material they said they had.
SMS is a really well known company in the car world. I don't recall if they claimed that the material was original or not, but it was a pretty close match to what I had in my 1982 Mirada. Ideally, it would be re-manufactured, so that any environmental exposure would be less likely to damage the material. I am no fabric expert, but the sample that I had felt pretty good, and seemed at least as thick as the torn edges of the original seat fabric.
Getting seat fabric re-manufactured is not that hard. All of the major restoration sources (LMC Truck, Year One, Legendary, etc.) offer re-manufactured replacement seat materials, and they go a lot further back than our car's' time period. I really doubt that any of these sources re-man.ufacture the fabrics they sell, they just order the material in batches from a real cloth mill (probably in China/Taiwan/Korea/Vietnam, etc.).
It was just a thought. If good quality fabric can be found, it would help Bruce out a lot, he could get the amount that he needs for the front and back seats, and be certain that it would last for a fairly long time. In addition, fabric is very easy to ship, so it shouldn't cost too much.
