VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - 1945 AND EARLIER 1929-1932 Australian paint codes

I'm hoping that one of the gurus or TAs here (casually looks toward the Dog of Junkyard fame) may be able to help with identifying the correct colours for a 1929 Chev tourer... the catch is that I'm looking for the correct Australian colours which as far as I can tell don't match the USA or Canadian colours specified for that year.

The GM Aust model specification sheet I've seen lists the following colour options for a Holden bodied 1929 Tourer;

• 1. Body colour - Merrimac Beige (DuPont 2441313) / Moulding colour - Beige Brown (DuPont (2811279) / Striping colour - Mountain Ash Scarlet (DuPont 2811288)

• 2. Body colour - Pelham Blue (DuPont 2441297) / Moulding colour - Black (DuPont 2812812) / Striping colour - Picador Cream (DuPont 2811689)

I'm not having any luck matching the DuPont numbers and I can only match the term "Pelham Blue" with a 1960s Cadillac colour and it looks way too bright to be period correct for a car of the 20s & 30s.

Can anyone tell me if the above colour names or codes match anything that looks familiar to you from around that period?

I guess I'm hoping that Australia was maybe a season or two behind (or ahead) in colour choices. It would be a real pain if we only had colours that were specific to down here.

Andrew,

Merrimac Beige is an American colour from the early 1930's Plymouth and chrysler used it 31-32 .
Paint code under Ditz-lac intermix system IM-202 , it was also called "Desert sand"
http://www.ply33.com/Models/PB/index.html
No luck with the Pelham blue as the 1960's appears to be a metalic paint.

Generally here Down Under you need a sample of the colour to have it electronically scanned and they can give you a formula in Acrylic Lacquer .

The other way to do it is to find a paint supplier that will let you go through colour chip samples and pick out a colour which you feel is close, and then go with that colour.

The striping and moulding colour paints were a different type of base in the paint (enamel)(281..) compared to the nitrocellulose paint used for the main body (244...).

Thanks Jack, I've got DuPont Australia working on this for me so I'm hoping that they can come up with something. They have acknowledged that the numbers are ones they used from that era and are looking to see if they can find the formula.

I was just hoping that either someone local had already done it or one of our international buddies had heard of similar named colours. I wouldn't expect that DuPont would have come with a whole new colour option for Australia rather than just use a formula they had already used (or had planned to use) in the USA.

I'd imagine that in 2011 it would be nigh impossible to find a 1929 with original factory paint to match.

Australian body builders such as Holden's Motorbody builders did use there own names mostly , through the local paint manufacturers (dulux). None of the 1931 Australian Chevrolet colours match any of the US colors for 1931.

Some interesting info for us down here....

The 1929 GM Aust publication "Australia builds a motor car" explains how the paint used on motor cars of the day, Duco was a process perfected by GM scientists in 1923 and that GM Australia was producing so many cars and the demand for Duco so great that GM agreed to setting up of a Duco producing plant in Sydney. In May 1928 the factory was started and it was producing Duco for Holden bodies within six months.

The British American Lead Manufacturers Duco factory was selling over 30,000 pounds worth of Duco to the five GM Australia plants with 12 months of commencing production.

The B.A.L.M ,DULUX, ICI, PPG, factory is still operating at the same site at Botany, Just north of Botany Bay. A regular Environmental monitoring program is in place to monitor The plume of materials that is heading towards the fish breeding grounds in Botany Bay.