Hooked on Originality

If you've followed some of the many pages of this Blog or have browsed through this website, you already know I am an originality freak.  Here is another example....

My car came to me from Arizona, and most if not all rubber was cooked to a hardened crisp and had to be replaced.  On the inside of the car, the vinyl interior was hard and cracked, not to mention stained, and the original headliner was just toast.  All of that had to go.  Another interior item that looked like it had roasted in the heat was the interior clothes hooks.  They were a very dark brown- nearly black.  I bought new ones and they are shown below- side by side with the originals.
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These replacements seemed to be very white, but I just put them away along with the originals.  Good thing I don't throw away original parts though, look what I saw when I went back to get the replacement parts out for installation.  The back side of the very dark originals was gray.  Not white, gray.

So, I figured what the heck, I might as well attempt to restore the originals.  I tried cleaning with everything I could think of, but there was no impact on the color at all.  Scrubbing with steel wool resulted in almost no change, still very dark.  Ok, it was time to get more aggressive- I used sandpaper and a fingernail file.
Result is below.  I will be re-installing my gray original hooks.