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I was the one who told you that the center "beak" piece was made of stainless steel. A few days ago, I was at a friend's house (who has several PVs) and happened to see one, which I looked at fairly closely. That particular example (on a 59 544) appeared to be chrome plated brass. It may well be that the later ones were indeed stainless steel. As far as I know all the "whiskers" were chrome plated pot metal.
As for how to improve the appearance of the mustache, I would suggest removing the three components from the car and using paint stripper (or carburetor cleaner might do the job if it's just spray paint) to clean them and determine how bad they actually are. It is fairly likely that the whiskers will be badly pitted, and therefore not practical to restore (pitted pot metal is almost impossible to get a good smooth finish on) I would suggest either finding a better pair, either used, from somewhere like Arizona or New Mexico, perhaps, or reproduction, which would probably have to come from Sweden (and would be priced accordingly) Or you could fill the pits and paint them silver again. As for the beak, it might be in good enough shape to polish up and use as is---chromed brass seems to hold up a lot better than pot metal, and stainless steel is practically immune to corrosion.
The five V-O-L-V-O letters above the grill and the birds (nightingales, supposedly) on the sides of the hood are also chromed pot metal so the same comments apply. If instead there are number scripts on the sides of the hood, those are usually anodized aluminum, which tends to turn dull and whitish with age. They cannot be restored to their original appearance easily, but can be stripped to bare metal and polished, which will need to be redone fairly often as unprotected aluminum oxidizes rapidly when exposed to the elements. You could polish them and spray them with clear lacquer, but that will start to peel in a year or two, and look even worse than tarnished aluminum, and be considerably more trouble to clean up yet again.
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