Lindy's Auto Upholstery

Auto RepairVerified

About

Lindy's Auto Upholstery in College Area, San Diego, has operated from 7267 El Cajon Boulevard since 1949, making it one of the city's longest-running automotive interior shops. Owner Armando Sarbia runs a three-person crew that handles seat reupholstery, headliner replacement, convertible top installation, vinyl top work, leather restoration, carpet fitting, truck tonneau covers, and aftermarket sunroof installation across American and foreign cars, trucks, motor homes, and boats. Interior restoration projects here frequently run in parallel with stereo and electronics upgrades at Stereo Depot San Diego down the boulevard, where custom speaker enclosures and head-unit installs are designed around the same cabin layout. The shop is an authorized installer for OEM+ Auto Tops, a manufacturer that produces convertible soft-tops using proprietary patterns matched to factory dimensions for Mustang, Miata, Porsche Boxster, BMW Z-series, and other drop-top platforms. The El Cajon Boulevard location sits at the intersection of Harbinson Avenue and 73rd Street in the 92115 ZIP, roughly a mile east of SDSU on the same commercial corridor that connects College Area to La Mesa. Sarbia's material inventory includes marine-grade Sunbrella canvas for boat covers, Haartz cloth and vinyl for convertible tops, perforated leather hides in automotive-standard grain patterns, and closed-cell foam padding cut to original-equipment seat profiles. Classic car owners restoring bench seats or split-back bucket seats bring pattern samples or original trim tags so the shop can match stitch counts, pleat widths, and piping diameters to factory specifications. Post-upholstery paint-correction and ceramic coating for vehicles getting a full interior-exterior restoration is handled through Radiant Auto Spa in the same neighborhood. The shop stitches custom headliners using heat-activated adhesive on original-dimension backer board rather than spray-on contact cement, which prevents the sagging failures common on aftermarket headliner installs within two to three years.