I just dragged home a new project and can already see it in color, although it's been built in my mind for 20 years when the style of the car and the color both were considered outrageous: Henry J drag car in a candy orange over a carny-flake base. Gotta do it. No questions about it. Devin
I saw a candy tangerine Henry J years ago. Your combo will look great, the shape of the car and that color work!
Not me. I worry about the color choice as I do about any aesthetic decision, no more and no less, regardless of the cost of materials. The effect of the expensive material (not to mention expensive labor) just prevents me from painting the car altogether!
Tony,great write up,we're just about ready to lay some color on my son's O/T vehicle he picked gloss black-(HELL NO!) i finally talked him into this med-bright red with a white top,he's still on the fence with a flat black mid-break 3' streak,i think it will be a classy look since it is a old vehicle & won't see another in the parking lot, it's a good thing we're painting this for ourselves 'cause we don't have to worry what people will think, I gotta say one of the best color schemed car i ever owned was a 3 tone 55 Pontiac wagon,white on top,metallic dark green then a pastille light green on bottom from the factory,then there's the gold paint on my 64 Pontiac Thanks for making my brain work again!--chuck
My dailys are all boring. White, white pearls or silver. Had 1 black daily driver- never again. I've had lots of black hot rods & a few bright ones. Probably the wildest for me was the 55 Chevy I chose to paint in Viper competition yellow & Nissan satin white pearl. I think I started hating it after a year. I could drive down the road w/ a group of hot rods & guess who's car had all the dead bugs splattered all over it? Parking at a show that was on the grass was an invitation for every bug within 5 miles to land on it. Lots of pearl visible in this shot- pearl was only on the white. This is probably the most accurate pic of the yellow. It was blinding bright. I'd never paint a car yellow again. Hats off to those that do.
One bug says to the other "look! Over there, a giant butter cup" and they tell all of their friends. Nothing to do with paint , but bugs- They are amazing. How is it that a bug who has basically the entire atmosphere to fly around in can find and choose to fly into your nostrils while the bike is going 70 mph down the highway.
We have a white Subaru with a three colour pearl overlay, man do the bugs love that on a sunny spring day. I am not sure what they are doing but they seem to be having a good time doing it........
I'm still giving this subject thought. More accurately, I'm ALWAYS giving color selection thought. Like the old saying goes, paint,stance, and rolling stock, determine the overall look. Anyhoo, that said, I'm currently pondering red, specifically Titian, and Honduras maroon. I've seen mention that Titian red was/is a metallic (presumably very fine?), but I get the impression that Honduras maroon was a solid. I also see a ton of late model stuff with great looking darker red metallics. I just wonder if one of these colors might pass as a modern stand in for a classic color such as Titian red. I'm a younger guy, well here anyway (41), so I wasn't there when this stuff was current, but I'm shooting for a '57 cutoff for my RPU project, so I'd like to get this stuff 'right'.
Funny, I can remember and visualize Titian Red quite well, because it was an extremely popular color for repaints circa 1956. But I can't think of a current color that's similar, and it's not an easy color to describe. It was a metallic red, and I think somewhat brighter than the deep metallic maroons that have been used on production cars for the last 15 or 20 years. I'll keep an eye out and see if I can spot anything with a similar look.
I work at a Chrysler dealer, and they seem to have 5 or 6 different metallic reds ranging from what looks like, from 50 feet or so, plain ol' bright red to various shades of dark red/maroon/wine. So, what about Honduras maroon, was it a solid like I have assumed for years, or am I all wet?
Well, this wasn't so difficult. Titian Red looked a lot like this color on the Lloyd Bakan coupe. I remember that this paint was controversial (as to whether it accurately captured the car's original color) and a complex mix, but in this picture it looks pretty much the way that I remember Titian: I remember the name Honduras Maroon, but I don't know what it looked like.
Wow! Ok I'm settled on the color, for today anyway . But, definitely nothing I've seen on a newer car that resembles it, now I've got something to look for while sitting in traffic. As to the Honduras maroon question, The Rodder's Journal featured a Vicky last issue in that color. I can't tell if it's metallic or not, but it sure doesn't look like it. The car has a very 'molded in color' look to it if you know what i'm trying to say. Although I also am under the impression that it was a color more used on customs of the era.
i had a hard time picking a color for my 57 merc. for the longest time i was going with silver but theres to many silver cars so then i got turned on with the flattened look!
Bringing this one back up, since this seems to be the unofficial 'official' color thread. What about orange? By this, I mean, was orange used at all in the fifties on hot rods? I associate orange more with 60's/70's era stuff, and don't recall seeing any photographic evidence of orange in the fifties, even the latter half of the decade. Anyone?
Brad2v, I don't recall seeing any car painted orange -- stock or modified -- before 1958. In '58 only, Lincoln offered a color that they called Matador Red (a name used multiple times by different manufacturers) that was an extremely intense orange-red, a really amazing STRONG color. This is a Matador Red '58 Lincoln: I don't remember another factory color that could really be called orange, although '65 Mustang Poppy Red came pretty close to the Lincoln color. Eventually Mavericks, Chargers, Camaros and Challengers were offered in pretty bright shades of orange, but as you point out it was really in the late '60s that most of those showed up. I was so taken by that Lincoln color that I had a '41 Ford coupe painted in it. It looked killer when it was polished up! Sadly, I don't have any pictures of it.
While it was perhaps not normally listed in mainstream manufacturers' catalogues, orange and similar colours were not unknown on coachbuilt cars well before the '50s:
My 36 Dodge D2 in my avatar was painted with Kia Sorento radiant red and some people thought it was an original colour, sorry color. Great thread!!
Kaiser was way ahead of other manufacturers with color choices. Here is a 1949 Kaiser Virginian. Can't say if it was ever selected for hot rods, but certainly was available.
What I haven't seen in long time is a pink and black '55 Ford Crown Victoria or a pink and black '55 Studebaker Speedster. Dave.
It's interesting how certain cars just don't wear certain colors well. Yellow for example, can look hideous on certain cars and look good on others. Same with red. Washington Blue in a single stage paint and not real glossy looks great on most cars. Same with black. Maroon on a Galaxy looks killer and it also looks killer on a 40 Ford. Why is that, both cars have drastically different sheet metal. Curves vs straight. In my opinion, yellow on a galaxy doesn't look good yet on a 32 it can look great. Dark solid colors seem to look great on just about everything. In about 63 the Corvette had a color called Daytona Blue Poly (I think) and that color can look great on pretty much anything. Weird how that works out. Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
Actually there's quite a bunch of really great colors on newer cars. You just don't really notice them because they're on such boring cars. Remind me tomorrow when it's daylight to show a beautiful dusk like blue we put on my buddy's 60 Bonnevile from a 2009 something
I could look at 1000's of these pix, certainly more fun than paint patches. But I did get bogged down in the "gray" area above - a thread on colors has so much about gray? Gray is for large ships with guns and numbers on the bow! I also think it is one of the most unsafe colors (especially at dawn / dusk as it matches the color of worn pavement perfectly!). Gary
I am lucky enough to have this '58 Aussie Ford dealer tri tone colour selector complete with mint condition un faded chips. Nice colours in here! -H.R.D-
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