Restoration Impossible: Painting Our Elan

With a color chosen and the bodywork completed, it was now time to actually paint our Elan.

We had primed the Elan’s body with PPG ECP15 gray primer. This premium, quick-drying primer offers great adhesion, build and helps level the surface you are trying to cover.

After final block sanding with 500-grit paper, we sealed the entire car with black …

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Very nice progress.  Coming together very well.  Should be a nicely sorted end product.

Mixing the Color published your competence well. Everyone will be amazed, seeing your craftsmanship.

Thank you

Thanks! We are very happy with how the car is turning out.

So you did not make Amelia Island?

In reply to pharriso:

Just seen the article that you posted on Amelia Island with photos of the car on display.

Congrats, the car looks superb!! I really enjoyed following your progress with what started out as a complete wreck.

Yes, somehow, with an incredible amount of hard work, we did get the car on the field.

It's a bit strange the way you left the articles... latest one has the engine bay starting to be completed... Amelia Isalnd was March 8th... no reports on completing the car or your experience at Amelia Island. Did the car get no love?

I have finished the print and web stories and the boys are posting them. We did not win an award at Amelia, but as the story says, just getting it done and to the event was award enough.

Tim, can you talk a bit about how your approach paint selection on an old restoration like this?  There's lots of chatter about picking a vintage color vs a modern one.  Beyond metallic, what would you say makes a color "look" classic?  Are there other aspects that add depth or complexity that might not be appropriate for a classic?

You said you chose base coat / clear coat.  Did you pick a specific formulation that would give the period-correct look?  Some would say that only a single-stage would look right.  Clearly you prove that wrong here.

Then again some might claim that 15 coats of hand-rubbed lacquer is the only way to go.  Sounds like a lot of work to me!

Thoughts?

Thanks, Scott

Spectacular job, Tim - the Elan has always been my favorite sports car, in my mind, it is the definitive postwar sports car.  I've loved them since i was a kid, reading the beautifully drawn Bob Challman ads in SCG (later replaced by simple ads that just said "the car that Clark drives").  I hope this one is a keeper, it is truly a classic by any definition.

It looks great, and I really like the color choice.  Since I've been reading GRM and CM since the late '80's I feel like I've watched you mature as a restorer.  Given the shape of the Elan and how it looks now, i'm a bit worried about what you might start with next!    

I try to always pick an appropropriate color. I saw a metal flake copper MGA at a show this weekend and it looks so wrong to me, to use modern colors on an old car.

So beyond sparkly bass-boat/bumper-car paints, what do you think makes a classic/vintage color vs. a modern color?

Does paint formulation or system come in to play?

Thanks, Scott

Scott,

Yes, paint formulation does matter. When we painted the Group 44 GT6, we used a single stage paint to make it more original. I just like piant colors that are perio corret, which would mean pastels in the fiftes, dull metalics in the sixties and bright colors in the early seventies. I do not care for all of the browns in the late seventies.

No browns, eh?  So seventies, though.

I don't like them either.