[Uncle Sam]

I was just at a car gathering today and in attendance was an original 289 slab side. I was looking in the engine compartment and noticed the footboxes on both sides were not raw aluminum. When I have seen ERAs and other replicas, I wondered why the footbox had the appearance of white painted fiberglass. Now for the question: what material was the footbox made out of in the original Cobras? I assumed that the footbox in the replicas was fiberglass because of manufacturing cost, but now I suspect that this is a replication as well. BTW, the original 289 footboxes looked riveted to the cowl and were white in appearance. They looked to be a non-metal construction like fiberglass to me.