Off white roofs on 50's cars

[Jon Cole]

I want an off white for a roof on my Hudson. Wimbleton White is still too brite. I just found this pic from a contest in Sweden... that looks just right. Any ideas?

EDIT: maybe it is Wimbleton White?

Photo courtesy 'Risto'

Edited March 24, 2012 by Jon Cole

[TooOld]

It looks a little darker than Wimbledon White . Try an Almond color used for painting kitchen appliances ( Rustoleum or Krylon ) . My refrigerator and stove look real close .

[Cato]

Yes, Wimbledon is lighter than that. I have it on my 1:1.

[Craig Irwin]

Thats more of a sand beige.

[bbowser]

Almond or I used Ivory on mine.

[Kit Basher]

Tamiya TS-7 Racing white is darker than Wimbeldon white. Maybe not quite that dark, tho.

[Eshaver]

Look for an old G M truck color from the 70's called "Neutral" . martin Seniour paints had a 16 OZ spray called Peanut Beige The beige is a little darker as in more yellow . Ed Shaver

[Harry P.]

Different paint brands will have different names for that color. "Ivory" might be one to look for.

[Art Anderson]

having here, a Martin-Senour (NAPA's virtual house brand of automotive paints) chip book that covers the 45 years from 1947-92, I can state that nowhere in those paint chips is there a "pure" (as in appliance) white; none, nowhere, no how.

In fact, almost all automotive paint colors from those years, certainly from the beginning of my color chip book through at least the late 1960's are fairly muted, only black being a really stark color.

Why? My theory is, and has been for years, that paint pigments for years have been less than stable in UV (sun) light, prone to both fading and color shifting over time, with the purer pigments being the most suseptible. Also, with lighter colors, certainly white, visible air pollution had to be a factor (bear in mind, in the US, and indeed throughout Europe well into the 1960's, a majority of buildings in larger cities were heated with coal, with the resulting brown smog and all the brown particulates that entailed--and given the nature of lacquers, even enamels of the day, discoloration would have been a problem. Hence, virtually all white paint chips in this book actually appear to be at least slightly cream-colored, some darker, some lighter, but with a fresh paintjob, teamed up with another, darker color on the lower body, they looked very much snow-white, but that had to be an illusion, now that I look back on it.

To have seen those lacquers mixed for use in a body shop, almost to a color, black toner was one of the first toners added to just about every can of paint, again, muting the colors to some degree.

Art

[Art Anderson]

I want an off white for a roof on my Hudson. Wimbleton White is still too brite. I just found this pic from a contest in Sweden... that looks just right. Any ideas?

EDIT: maybe it is Wimbleton White?

Photo courtesy 'Risto'

Jon,

If you are doing a factory stock color scheme, Hudson had no white in 1952-53. They did have "Honey Cream" which is about a Pantone shade lighter than MM Phoenician Yellow, which in real life comes across as a slightly yellowish white.

Art