ad-lib color choices

[JHertzman@xxxxxxx]

In AD7-090 Mark Jones wrote " When I sold Alfas 10 years ago, we had a few
cars come into the dealership in colors other than those published as
available.  A dark red-brown metallic Milano comes to mind, it showed up in a
color available for Spiders.  An unusual green metallic for the last new GTV6
we saw in 86 was really cool, another non-alfa color as I recall.  I simply
thought the guys at the factory just tried new colors out on a few cars and
just sent them out the door to be sold with the rest.  Why should we think the
guys in Arese should be logical and rigidly consistent?"

I'm not sure how tongue-in-cheek Mark Jones may have been, but new cars coming
in in non-Alfa colors? I have my doubts on that and on the last two sentences-
the guys at the factory just ad-libbing new colors, and why would we expect
them to be logical? It may fit the stereotype of creative artisans in a
cottage industry, but the workers at the factory didn't make such whimsical
decisions about color any more than they did about which engine to put in a
particular car. 

In the case of the GTV-6, my least unreliable source lists thirteen different
colors used in production before 1985, with a few more added later. The 1984
GTV-6 brochure published by Alfa Romeo of North America had listed just four
colors; the standard GTV-6 colors used at the time which did not make the cut
for the published USA lineup included hawthorn, indaco, Dutch blue, pine
green, ivory, piper yellow, plum, Le Mans blue, periwinkle, and beige, most of
them recognizable names for old standard Alfa colors, although some of them
had never been seen in the USA.

In the case of the Milanos, the same source lists sixteen different colors on
the 75/Milano, including three different whites and six different blues. I do
not have chips or charts on the Milano, but my recollection is that there were
just five choices offered in the USA when we bought ours early in '87, and not
many more later.

Quite different games are played by those marketing people at the factory who
pick colors to offer, those marketing people (whether at the factory or at
national distributors) who pick sub-sets of those colors to offer in
particular markets, and those who pick color names for use in various markets.
An Alfasud color chart I have (in five languages, so evidently not for a very
limited market- English, French, German, Italian and something I don't
recognize-) lists thirteen colors, including (besides the easily recognized
Alfa Red, Corale, and Capodimonte) Cuma, Faito, Nisida, Pozzuoli, Pompei,
Ischia, Somma, Procidia, Matese, and Posillipo, all hiding old standbys like
yellow ochre. The names change to fit national conventions as well as current
fashions; Testa di Moro became Tete de Negre for the French market and
something quite else for the USA. 

Marketing can involve a lot of guessing and a lot of sampling; I have no
trouble assuming that odd examples of the many colors used at the factory for
other markets might be brought here from time to time to test dealer reactions
and customer reactions, and that those cars were then sold rather than sent
back or scrapped, but explaining it as some guys at the factory just winging
it because the mood strikes them and hey, they are crazy Italians, seems
improbable and unnecessary. 

John H.

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