Last month’s issue of Sports Car Market featured a Reader Forum in which the editors posed the question:
The "resale red" era of collector car restoration is long past, with originality now favored in most cases. Yet some collectors still respray their cars, regardless of the market’s preference. When do you think it is appropriate to change the color of a car?
This question caused me to think back on the decision I had to make for The Alfatross. When I came into possession of the car it was a faded, dirty, color that looked to me more brown than red. I looked forward to repainting it one day and tried to imagine what it would look like afterward. My first inspiration was to give it a two-tone paint job like an Austin Healy 3000 I saw years earlier—deep purple above the break line and candy white pearl below. If that sounds utterly vulgar and bizarre, please try to remember this was around 1970, a year or two after the British heavy metal band Deep Purple formed. In 1975 the Guiness Book of World Records listed Deep Purple as “the globe’s loudest band”.
Decades later, after I learned The Alfatross was a special car that demanded respect for its original appearance, I discovered I wasn’t the only one who thought a two-tone paint job would be appropriate. Some period photos of its siblings show they left the Zagato factory with two-tone paint jobs, and even “racing stripes”.
This month’s issue of SCM printed 28 responses to the question. Predictably, opinions varied widely from “keep it original at all costs” to “paint it whatever color you like” to “just wrap it in vinyl and change it any time you feel like it”. One of the responses came from me:
Color blindness is pretty common among males (about 10% have some form). I have the blue-yellow variant. That doesn’t mean I can’t see blue and yellow, but it does mean that for me certain shades of blue and green blend together as do shades of yellow and red. This may be the reason I am not fond of red, retail or wholesale! I mention this only because I am in the process of restoring a 1955 Alfa Romeo 1900C SSZagato. When it came time to paint the car I chose to go with its original color: red. I did not want to do that because I don’t like red, but that is definitely its original color. After the deed was done, I was informed that according to Zagato’s records, it was originally some shade of blue! That would have delighted me, but because I personally stripped the body using soda blasting, I can tell you for a fact that there was never a dollop of any shade of blue on that car. Here’s the quandary: Do I stick with the red color that I don’t like because I know it is original, or go for a blue that I do like even though I know it is not original—no matter what Zagato’s admittedly sketchy color records indicate?
Of course I wasn’t looking for advice. That decision was made a long time ago. I just submitted it because I thought it would probably present a unique perspective. The fact it was published proves that it was.
In retrospect, if I had known that Zagato’s records indicated The Alfatross’ original color was some shade of blue I probably would have had it painted that color instead of “retail red”—even though I could not find any trace of blue anywhere on the car. Yes, I like shades of blue more than shades of red, but there is another reason: So many of The Alfatross’ siblings are red—the vast majority—that it is hard to tell them apart in photographs. If I had followed my original inclinations, as the only Deep Purple/candy white pearl 1900C SSZ, she would be instantly recognizable with “the globe’s loudest paint job”.
