I believe its always best to return to first sources if at all possible.
Austin-Healey white (always factory code WT 3) was already called Ivory White
in the BN2 factory colour chip card (pub.no.1297) as early as January, 1956.
It was called Ivory White in the 100-Six chip booklet (pub.no. 1531), as well
as as the 3000 booklet (pub.no.1531A), and the various 3000 Convertible colour
chip booklets (pub.nos. 2161 through 2161H).
Interestingly, there is an asterisk next to Ivory White in 2161 that has the
note "For colour samples of Ivory White see Old English White"
I think the reason for the name change from Old English to Ivory in '56 was
simply that at that time it sounded too old and stuffy, the thrust of sales
being towards America: hence Reno, Colorado, Florida, Pacific. Into the
sixties the tweed cap, pip-pip cheerio, ye-olde English thing would once again
be fashionable as a sales theme in the US, and we got British Racing Green and
wood dashes in all the various makes of sports cars.
Back to first sources. The Austin colour sheets shown in the Auto Color
Library are scans of the Canadian R-M (Rinshead-Mason) colour chip booklets
put out yearly by that company concurrently with the introduction of new
models of cars (The R-M logo is whited-out on each online ACL sheet). They
had to match the actual cars at the time , so they're pretty close to a first
source. The colours seen online are only the tip of a huge iceberg. If you
watch their video, you see a large room crammed with file cabinets of colour
chip sheets. The point being: its NOT only "If you can bring it up online
that's all there must be". The Austin colours in Curt's link only go up to
1956-7, so the ones you see are not all the Austin colours that ever were.
Along with the R-M colour chip sheets (with nice onion-skin paper in between
pages, by the way) you of course got the pink sheets with the actual mixing
formulas. While these use long obsolete R-M tinting bases, you can still see
differences in shades of the same colour. Colorado Red had a more orangey
shade for 1957 only, becoming a little more blood red for 1958-64. Florida
Green was a slightly deeper shade for the BN2 with its black interior, than
the 100-Six with its off-white interior. And Old English White/ Ivory White
had two formulas, the 1964 BJ8 version using a slightly larger amount of the
tinting base "TE-94 Bright White" instead of the earlier "TE-91 White" in the
mix.
As the cars retreated into the past, the paint companies combined these
similar shades, For example, Colorado Red became a single colour and was
combined with the similar Signal Red later on.
All great fun.
Best
Peter
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