On Thu, 3 Feb 1994, TeriAnn Wakeman wrote:
> I was orignally going to go with a non-stock colour on my TR3. I spent a
>long
> time deciding on what it should be and picked out a '93 Dodge colour. Then
>just
> before I was to have the body tub painted I went to the Portland All British
> field meet. I saw a lovely big Healey, that was gold. It had one of those
> paints that looked different depending upon how the light hit it. It was
> stunning.... until it parked next to a herd of big Healeys. Suddenly it
>looked
> WRONG. It looked out of place and like it didn't really belong with the
>other
> big Healeys. Thats when I made up my mind to paint my TR3 a factory colour.
>
Of course I wasn't there, so I can't be sure, but that gold Healey may
have been a factory color. There was a pale metallic beige or light gold
(I forget the name of the color) that looks as you describe. I believe
the cover car on this month's Chatter (AHCA magazine) is this color
(actually a Lexus gold, but it's close to the original). I'm sure a lot
more cars are that color now than originally were painted that color, and
indeed it does stand out among the BRG and red and white, but it was not
necessarily a non-stock color.
Be that as it may, Teri-Ann is quite right about thinking carefully about
a color if you intend to show a car. It can make a big difference in the
response of people and judges. My bugeye is a bright yellow-green (not
chartreuse, but definitely not BRG) that is fairly close to an original
color called leaf green (it is a bit brighter than the original, but I was
working from photos of an original car).
Everybody likes BRG or red, but people often hate the color I've painted
my car, either because they genuinely dislike it and/or because they
assume it cannot be original. At the Stowe British Invasion last fall, a
fellow bugeye owner asked me, "Whatever made you pick that color?" I said,
"Well, it is as close as I could get to a factory color I liked." In the
most condescending tone imaginable, he said, "I have owned my bugeye for
30 years, and I remember all the colors. The only green ever was BRG." He
is wrong, of course. BRG was used for only a short time on bugeyes, after
which the only green was Leaf Green. (Have you ever noticed that the
wronger someone is, the more certain he sometimes is that he's right? But
I digress.)
If that sort of thing bothers you, and if you think your den will be
forever incomplete without a lot of plated hardware on the walls and
shelves, then maybe you should rethink the color. I can detect guards red a
mile away, and I am pretty sure it isn't original.
If, on the other hand, you want guards red, and nothing else will make you
truly happy, then more power to you. I restored a junk yard refugee
nobody else would have touched, and if I want to paint it red, white, and
blue stripes, I figure I have earned the right.
I do like to see a few cars in unusual and (originally) unpopular colors,
as a record of the way things were. Leaf green for bugeyes, and oh, yes,
there was a really wild pink on later Sprites, and how about plum colored
TR 6's, and mineral blue and tyrolite (sp?) green MGA's? All worth
preserving. I've been tempted to buy an MGA just so I could paint it
tyrolite green.
Ray Gibbons
|