By Dean Sprague

We all seem to develop subjective perspectives about things as we move though our lives. One of mine is white paint on most automobiles. I don’t necessary dislike white. I have had white appliances, bathtubs, even white on rice and other things but for the most part I really don’t care for white on cars. Except once; I saw a white on white (no rice) 1959 Cadillac convertible with a white top that looked great. It’s not a superstitious thing it’s just that white feels a bit utilitarian to me. It doesn’t reflect the beauty from the bodylines or show it’s depths like other colors. Of course that means every time I find a great deal on a car you know what color it is.

For example, it was on a Saturday morning (now over two decades ago) I found a 90% restored barely driven (since the restoration) 1967 Camaro SS 350 for sale in the local classified. It didn’t mention color but it looked like a phenomenal price. I called my son Jason and we went right out to look at it. When we approached the house there it was carefully nestled in one side of the garage protected by an expensive car cover. We found the owner, a retired police chief from a small town somewhere in upstate New York. He appeared to be in his late 50s and his new very attractive wife looked much younger. He wanted to take her to Europe on a belated honeymoon, hence the reason for parting with his five-year restoration. He proudly removed the cover to expose a fantastic “white” Camaro. As an aside, I am still not sure, how you assign a “percentage complete” to a restoration. Since it only needed a few things and most of the needed parts were already there, it was a great deal. The car was just beautiful, all the date codes and numbers matched plus it had the build sheet and the Protect-o-Plate to guarantee it as one of the first 100 SS 350’s built so changing the color was out of the question. So white or not, I couldn’t just let it go. When we drove it away I saw the retired chief, now former owner standing in the middle of the street looking at the back of the car with tears in his eyes. I hope he felt it was all worth it. We finished the car about 3 months later and drove it about 500 miles, showed it a few times where it always won but I was never really comfortable with the color so when I had a chance to sell it to an auto museum in Michigan I took it.

I have done this color thing to myself several times but we will save those for later. Instead lets go to my most recent classic acquisition, a 1964 Volvo P1800S. When I bought the car it was Volvo wine red with back interior. It was not a bad color combination but incorrect for 1964. OF COURSE the car was originally white but at least it started life with a red leather interior. You may not know this but I am a bit of a stickler for authenticity in a restoration, wherever possible that is. Now comes the dilemma, should I bring the car back to its original colors or should I do what I want to do despite the fact that it will not match the firewall plate? Since I am bedeviled with “maturity” I have discovered some of my limitations. One is if I match the codes (paint it white) I will probably not keep the car. I would intend to but it just wouldn’t happen. I like the red interior but I know I would never be content with a white exterior.

What makes this all the more complex is that when we (me and my car buddy Dave) tried to remove the engine and transmission they would not clear the firewall. Oops! It seems the car was badly hit and the sub frame was pushed in and twisted a bit. OK a lot. Plus the cross member itself was bent. Well finally I found a straight cross member out of a donor car in Massachusetts which may I add, they were very proud of. Then I found a state of the art laser frame shop in town and after 11 plus hours on the rack the car is as straight as new (maybe even straighter). While it was in the shop I also had them blast the body to bare metal where pounds of 35-year-old cheap filler was removed. This left behind lots of mangled sheet metal, poor brazing/welding; bad body work and a few rust holes. I am now patching, replacing panel sections and re-working metal. This created another challenge.

In 1964 the P1800 only came in 3 colors; red, white and dark grey but some of the early 64 (late 63s) were still available in black. My car is a very early August 63 car titled 64 so to stay “fairly” original (that means to stay within the correct potential colors of the time) black might work and work well with a red interior and in some worlds might be considered original, well sort of. The challenge is can I get the car straight enough to paint it any dark color let alone black? You see black is like a mirror and it reflects everything underneath so basically the body must be “perfect”. This probably means 100 plus more hours of bodywork. There you have it, my dilemma. I must decide if I want to keep the car. No, I mean really keep the car not just say I will. If I did keep it then the extra work required to go black is fine but if not I should probably paint it white, replace the red leather and sell it as a zero mile code correct restoration then take the money and buy something else. Of course, that would mean at a minimum several hundred hours of lost time on the Volvo and even more time and money to be spent on my next classic car. You can’t buy a classic anything and not have to do something to it.

It seems that my relaxing retirement hobby may be getting a little stressful not to mention expensive. Did I also mention that I hate the sanding part of bodywork? That aside though, I really like the P1800S and this one has overdrive, air conditioning and room for taking my grandchildren (once seat belts are installed in the back) out for ice cream. Maybe I could learn to like white? Well, probably not. I may be talking myself into keeping it and going with black. Besides my grandkids seem to really like the car so I guess I will just keep welding, sanding and sanding, priming and blocking… and then we’ll see.