71 Swinger barn find

Oh yeah, and a padded backed vinyl top was never used by the factory in those years...they were all unpadded cloth backed.

How do I know? I ran my own custom Auto Upholstery shop back in the 80s. I replaced thousands of vinyl tops that were originally cloth backed with felt padded ones back then. The cloth ones needed a perfect factory roof to look right and the felt backed ones were more able to hide the imperfections and remain more dimensionally stable on the surface. Almost nobody wanted to restore a factory roof to accept a cloth backed top when a padded one could hide the sins.

The problem with deductive reasoning is making too many assumptions about what you see and imposing your own ignorance on your conclusions. Research and understanding of the manufacturing history is required to make good conclusions, not just plausible theorizing.