Paint colours

[ren]

evening, all

my 410 is going back to meet its maker (literally - the same guys who put it together in 1968 are still there!) for some metalwork and a bare metal respray. i'm dropping it off with brian at services mid-october for a few things before it makes a trip west. what a lucky boy i am.

they'll have it for 5-6 months (which sorts out my winter garaging a treat). i probably won't need to settle on a colour before christmas, but i'm so excited and i'd like to make some headway now (and i can't think of much else anyway).

i was wondering if any of you forumers can point me to pictures of cars in mid and darkish silver-grey colours. the leather is red. the car is currently midnight blue. it's been my dream to own a bristol since before i could drive, and stage 2 of that dream is the silver-red combination.

metaline silver is too light. metaline dark grey and metaline cambridge grey are too dark... i think metaline silver grey is my only hope, from the original colour chart, but it's the only silver for which bristol didn't have a colour panel to give me. i can't gauge from the tiny 1967 colour chart what it'd look like en masse and i'm hoping one of you has a car in this silver grey colour.

or perhaps you have better ideas? basically, nothing to light it looks 'thin' and nothing so dark that the chrome is too contrasted. i think the darker silver greys are great on 411 series 3 and beyond, but they look a bit too new on 410s and the couple of dark grey 410s i've seen look a bit dull and just not racy enough!

thanks, guys ... if you got this far in my excitable rant

ren

[John Keighley]

Ren,
Our 410 was one of those lighter grey tones and we opted for a colour that is almost a gunmetal grey with some blue. I must admit that I'm probably a little traditional but the colour is perfect for the style of the 410. This is actually a Jaguar colour called Solent Blue.
At night or on dull days, the impression is a dark grey but in bright sunlight the blue comes out perfectly so it's almost that you have two colours in the one. The comment that I get is how well we have managed to match the colour with the car.

[ren]

thanks, John, for the words and pictures. yours is a very similar colour to mine at the moment - it's not really bristol midnight blue, it's a toyota colour (a sticker up inside the wing in the boot told me) and it's quite a cool RAF-like blue/grey. the guys in the showroom really liked it and i must say that i have warmed to it. it's interesting that with a bit of blue, the greyness is a lot less flat and dull. and the RAF colour is a link to the aviation side, i suppose..

i'll look at the jaguar colours. i saw a lovely aston last week, which was a mid silver, very warm - more a yellow silver than a blue silver, if you know what i mean - with red leather interior. worked really well.

the 410 is a traditional car. works best with a traditional colour, i'm sure. you've made a good choice i think. starting to persuade me to revisit the RAF blues again...

[ren]

here's the love of my life (yes, the chrome's going to be done, too!) and a 411 in a colour i like a lotBristol_062.jpg

Bristol_048.jpg

[ren]

historical resource - useful for the names if not the colours. 'metaline' is a very fine metallic.

[ren]

also worth noting are the greens, which all disappeared once Mr Crook was in control - 'Cambridge Grey' became another slate grey colour, for example.

[dkleeman]

Originally Posted by ren

historical resource - useful for the names if not the colours. 'metaline' is a very fine metallic.

Ren

Do you have this colour sheet? I am trying to find a true reference to Cambridge Grey, which my 401 was originally painted.

Daniel Kleeman
Cambridge