Stuff Needed

• Four interior panels
• Material to cover the four interior panels (minimum)
• Stanley knife with a sharp blade
• Good pair of sharp scissors
• Some of that iron on leather type material - it's sold in Woolworths
• Strong glue - Evostick or alike
• Cross head screwdriver or a small allen key

Time Taken: Day / over a weekend

Why?
Have you ever thought that the interior of your bug could do with brightening up a bit to get rid of the sea of black. Making a set of custom interior panels - the 2 doors and the 2 under the rear windows - makes a great deal of difference. What I did was to keep the original panels and simply recover them with some different material. It's easy to do and also a very cheap and quick way to change and individualise your interior. Choice of material is entirely to your own taste. The best place to get it is your local fabric shop - the sort of place that sells material in rolls. I went along to one of these and found some material in the off-cut/reject trolley. If you look closely at the pictures the white shouldn't be there from the shops point of view, but it really suits the car. The red colour is also by chance a good match with the body. I got two rolls which cost me twenty quid. This should be enough to do the four interior panels, the rear parcel shelf and the sun visors if you want to (I had just enough to cover my front speaker panel in the foot well also).

Method
Removing the panels
First of all you need to remove your interior panels. If you know how to already, skip this step. Starting with the front. As you look at the back of the door you should have a door pull/black armrest type thing, a window winder and a door opening lever. All this needs to come off. If you have the chrome accessory winders remove these with the allen key. If you have the original type window winders you won't be able to see the screw. The winder is basically a bit of metal covered by a plastic cover. Where the winder seems to attach to the panel, pry the plastic cover up and push it to one side. Now you can unscrew the winder handle from the winder mechanism. If you've been having trouble with winding your windows have a good look at the teeth (where they fit on to each other) on the handle or on the winder mechanism and if they've become smooth, replace them.
The arm rest is simple - two bolts hold it on from the bottom - undo these. Lastly, the door opener. The well behind the handle that your hand fits into to open it is remove able. Pry one side of this off and remove it. Now you can see a screw which you have to remove. The panel itself is held on by clips that are attached to the panel which clip into plastic holders on the door. To remove the panel now, simply pull it off carefully. It's easier if you start in a corner. Make sure you don't lose the spring which goes over the winder handle 'teeth' bit. Back- This is held on by the catch for the back seat. To remove this lift up your back seat base (the bit you sit on) and pull the back bit of the seat forward. You will now see two big clip type things one on either side. Remove theses with the screwdriver and pull off the panels.

Preparation
Take off all the trim clips from the back of the panels. Next, remove the ashtray from the rear panel - simply pushes out. On the drivers side there is a pocket. This is glued on to the card of the panel from the side you don't normally see. Take the knife and cut between it and the panel at an angle so that you break the glue but don't cut either the panel or the pocket. Once you've got a corner up carefully pull the rest of the pocket off.

Material
Find somewhere clean and flat and lay the material face down on the floor and put the panel, also face down, on top of it. Place it in a corner allowing about two inches of extra material at the edges.
Now take the scissors and cut around the panel making sure you leave two inches extra of material around the edges of the panel.
Next cut diagonals in from the corner of the material to the corners of the panel making sure that you don't go too far. This is so that you can bend over the material to get a good looking corner. When you've done this spread the glue on the inside edge of the panel and on the extra material around the sides and leave it to go tacky (depending on the glue's instructions). Then fold over the extra material on to the back of the panel, making sure it is tight and that you get no creases etc on the front of the panel. Hold these 'flaps' down with something heavy like bricks so that they stay in the right place and leave a couple of hour to dry. The principle is the same for the back panels and the back shelf (if you've replaced the original with a plywood one for speakers).
In true Blue Peter style - here's one I made earlier:

Finishing Touches
When the glue is dry you will need to cut the holes for the winder handle, door opening lever, screw holes for the door pull and the pocket/ash tray. Basically, cut criss-cross from corner to corner across the bit you want to remove - using the holes in the original panel as a template-so that you get an X shaped cut. Fold these back and glue to the back of the panel in the same way as before. For the screw holes and winder handle use the original as a template again.
Next refit the pocket by glueing it in place and weighing it down until it dries. You could leave it like this but with winding the window up and down a lot you run the risk of fraying the material around the winder. This is where the leather patch comes in. Cut out a shape from the leather patch so that it will be bigger than the contact area of the window handle on the panel and glue it in place as shown in the photo.
All you've got to do now is refit the panel clips and refit the panel and door furniture (puller etc). The old winder handles didn't quite fit with the new panels so I got some chromed custom ones which I think finish it off nicely.
Here are the panels fitted to the door: