If it is original, then I would be happy to preserve it
Mark,
Keep it, you can only discard it once.
Just only the question that you cannot get "
your" color anymore should be reason enough to keep your old one.
Often a sympathetic (professional) cleaning does already a great job!
Yours is surely original if you have the molded rubber pad next to the accelerator pedal on your front tunnel carpet in exactly (!) the same way as John's and Badali's cars.
If it is different, yours is aftermarket.
The surround around the gear lever should be a glued rubber grommet for any 230 SL; maybe that was repaired once in the past on your car. You can see on John's homepage how the later molded rubber surround should look like.
Sadly the separate rubber ring of the earlier cars (111 997 1081 Grommet 230SL, 250SL up to VIN#001092) is NLA.
As I said: Keep it; you can only discard it once.
And a brand new carpet in the wrong color in a slightly aged but well preserved interior environment just looks a bit displaced.
Just my 2 cents....
Achim
(with faded but original pepper&salte square weave carpet)
