winging the colors

[JHertzman@xxxxxxx]

In AD7-110 Brian Shorey has added his comments on my color notes (in AD7-106,
"ad-lib color choices") responding to remarks in AD7-090 by Mark Jones "Re:
alfa's color choices". Mark and I have exchanged further notes and as far as I
can tell Mark and I are in complete agreement. But nothing precludes somebody
else from taking Mark's tongue-in-cheek comments more literally than he meant.
 
Brian went on to say he "saw a real nice looking late '74 gtv at the concours
italiano this year, in a pearl blue color, or something like that. - - (i've
*never* seen a gtv in that color).  i was told that it was an alfetta color,
which i recognized immediately, and that they had evidently tried it on a few
of the last gtv's to come to the usa."

If (as always, IF) the sources are correct there was just one color used on
the Alfetta coupes which was not used on the GT Veloce 2000, and that was
ivory, (listed also for the 1750 but not for the 2000) while there were five
colors used on the GT Veloce 2000 which were not used on the Alfetta coupes.
My guess is that the "pearl blue" Brian saw is one of two colors: grigio
indaco (indigo grey), which I don't remember having seen on a USA color chip
chart but which was one of sixteen colors used on the Giulia Super from 1965,
on both the 1750 and 2000 GT Veloces and Berlinas, and on Alfettas; or bleu
pervinca metallizzato (metalic periwinkle blue), which was used on the Berlina
2000, GT Veloce 2000, and Alfetta but again which I have never seen on a USA
color chip chart. The indigo is more likely, a very standard Alfa color which
could well have been considered too self-effacing for the US market at that
period.

I will cheerfully stand by my original points, that the USA market usually
received a very limited range of the colors currently used at any particular
time, that very occasionally we may have received, probably as marketing
tests, isolated examples of cars in other standard colors not normally
marketed here, and that we almost certainly never received any new car which
was painted in a color which was not a standard production color for that
model at that time. If Brian (or anyone else) can show me an isolated Milano
painted, say, Zagato yellow at the factory because somebody in the paint-booth
just felt like it, I will certainly concede the point.

Cordially, 

John H.

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