metalic paint

First, please don’t paint your car with metallic paint. It just won’t look correct, regardless of when such paint was “available”. This is personal opinion, and I’m sure some may disagree, but I’ve seen some Classics painted with metallic, and it’s like a slap in the face, just not right.

Second, my understanding is that the metallics that WERE available early on were very subtle, not the obvious big flakes you see on a lot of custom cars.

Third, remember that this is a Pierce Arrow, from a company that was fairly conservative in it’s art and color department. Yes, there may have been a few flashy cars, but as a rule Pierce stayed toward conservative color combinations.

Your phaeton appears to be in original colors.The Arrow has published both

the early and late 1929 color charts.Pierce Arrow did do some different colors later in the 1929 series cars.There was a Pierce Arrow ad in 1929 which shows a phaeton in front of Columbia University in a color pattern rather similar to that on your phaeton.There are paint books around that show the colors for the cars of that era.

Shame on them for calling your car a circus wagon just because it’s a little flaky.

I believe the correct nomenclature from the Pierce Art Department would have been “Brothel Blue””……..”

I apologize if my comments on metallic offended anyone. For some reason it’s a personal hot button, and I’m outspoken by nature.

A yellow polka dot Pierce is still a fine car! And I know that there are some nice cars out there that look good with metallic…(and bright colors, Ed!)

Beautiful puppy! Bull Mastiff?

I have a 1929 factory sales office catalog (original) that shows some very wild and bright paint on their new models. I could swear that the paint looks like it could be metalic!

The flakes used in the 30’s metallics were extremely fine and provided a much more subtle opalescent quality than modern paints with big flakes. The metallic colors were usually quite conservative and when done well (hate to use the work proper)are hard to tell at first they are actually metallic. Hardly “circus wagons”. You can probably tell I am thinking of using metallic on my ’35, the starting point being the 2 tone factory “Alpha Blue” and “Patricia Blue”. I have mixed around 6 sample colors now, starting with “standard” paint supplier color mixes and substituting only the fine grade flakes for the courser. Substituting the fine flakes does significantly shift the colors so it takes several tries and painting swaths on the car to fuss over what looks good (to me and my wife). Not quite there yet. So far the non-metallics just don’t quite look right. Many of the 2 tones in the ’30’s were very subtle, barely able to tell in some light, but the Alpha/Patricia combination did have more contrast than some. The Packard in the foreground departure point was a non-metallic Packard color “Dawn Gray”, but is a 1980 non-metallic Lincoln color.

On my research, I came across some trivia: A Toledo, Ohio ear, throat

and nose doctor, took what he learned from inventing the atomizer to

dispense medicine in vapor form, and invented the first spray gun.

Thanks Dr. DeVilbiss!