I should preface this by stating that I’m not sure if I’m a model railroader with a lot of vehicles or a vehicle collector with a lot of trains. I started collecting HO scale vehicles in the 90’s when the nicer ones started to become available. Having recently gone off on what could be called a vehicle bender- a debauch consisting of Oxford and Classic Metal Works models fueled by the arrival of my stimulus check, I thought at length about my taste in model vehicles and what influences it. Part of it is visual. (“I like that. It really looks sharp.”) However, particularly now that I’ve gotten older, there’s a lot of, “Yeah, I remember when those were all over the place” coming into play. No, I don’t remember the 30’s and 40’s- I’m old but not that old- but memories of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s are deeply ingrained. Come to think of it, people’s taste in automotive colors have changed immensely over the years, and that is something that rates some thought where model railroaders are concerned. After all, vehicles go a long way toward establishing the time period we model. Someone who has no idea when that GP35 showed up on your favorite railroad might be more likely to recognize the 67 ford or the 68 Charger waiting at the grade crossing. I think it was Lance Mindheim who pointed out that if you want realistic vehicles, they should all be black, white or some shade of silver gray. Some time ago, I sat in my black pickup truck watching the cars traveling a local highway and discovered that yep- Lance’s observation was spot on. Black, white and silver were far and away the most popular. The only real surprise was the distant runner up. It turned out to be various shades of red- a spot of color in an otherwise monochrome nation. Tony Koester, on the other hand, made a much different observation about the 50s. They were a riot of color and one only needs to look at the selection of 1955 fords offered by CMW a few years ago. Red, blue, yellow or green set off in a two-tone scheme in most cases, often by white but sometimes by black or some other shade. There is a new one coming out in pink and charcoal. I can’t wait. These cars fall into the “Yeah, I remember those” category. (I was a small boy then, but growing up across the street from three gas stations, I had a front row seat.) That, combined with the Ford dealer that will be located on my scrolling era layout, made me a danger to myself. I’m not sure if I bought all of the 55s, but I may have. It wasn’t just Ford, either. Mid-fifties Dodges and Chevrolets were similarly colorful. Trucks were more utilitarian. In the 40s and first half of the fifties, trucks were pretty much solid colors, many of them understated black, green or dark blue. In fact, for many years, if the customer didn’t specify a color, a new Chevrolet truck would arrive in Brewster green. (I discovered that on an old Chevy truck forum. Wish I’d known that before I acquired the 41-46’s in so many other colors.) In the mid-fifties, Ford made trucks in quite a few colors, but a lot of them were still red. It wasn’t until the late fifties that two-tone trucks became common. Tony also notes that the 60s were more conservative. I must disagree to an extent at least. By the mid 60s, metallic colors had become immensely popular. Metallic blue, lime green and especially turquoise were everywhere. The 68 Ford Torino and other similar vehicles often sported an accent stripe on each side that flowed with the body lines. I wasn’t even old enough to drive then, but fell in love with a black Torino with a gold stripe that someone in town owned. The 70s got even more colorful than that. CMW’s 74 Buick wagon, for example, comes in metallic and solid colors that were pretty mainstream by then, but musclecars could be quite outrageous. There were orange and canary yellow mustangs, bright yellow Roadrunners and Camaros mixed in with bright fluorescent green and metallic purple ‘Cudas. Then there were the older cars that survived to gain new lives with the hotrod contingent. I remember being deeply impressed by a locally owned metalflake purple 55 Chevy- so much, in fact, that I nearly heaped such treatment on my recently acquired 54 Ford. (Fortunately, I came to my senses and chose a metallic midnight blue, a nice compromise that the Ford still wears today.) Everything has changed a whole lot since the deep, rich maroons, greens and grays of 30’s and 40’s gave way to the two-tones of the mid-fifties, and sometimes it takes some research to sort out right from wrong. (It’s such a hardship to sit at the computer and look at pictures of beautiful old cars, you know.) As a case in point, I have some two-tone 49 Mercurys from Oxford in my collection. They were a “that’s really sharp” purchase. They were a bit early to appear in two-tone paint and recently, I started wondering if they were accurate. At length, I found a beautiful, original two-tone green, low mileage Merc in Arizona. It was for sale for a lot of money. Mission accomplished. Things don’t always work out that well, though. Classic Metal Works’ 53 Ford Country Squire in woodsmoke gray is a case in point. It was only after buying one that I discovered that Ford did indeed offer this color on some vehicles, but the Country Squire wasn't one of them. Oops. I guess the whole point of this lengthy ramble is that there’s a prototype for almost anything somewhere. It’s really not about what’s right, but when it was right. Above from left- A 1931 Ford pickup (Athearn) in a rich dark green and black scheme, a 1936 FORD (CMW) in french gray and a 1941 Lincoln (Oxford Diecast) in spode green are typical of the 1930s and 40s. The 1936 Ford at right, with its bright yellow paint, stylized flames and wire wheels is perhaps typical of an older car turned into a street rod of the 70s to the present. Second photo above- The red 56 Ford pickup at left is as typical of the 50s as a pink Cadillac. Two tones like the 55 Chevy in black and salmon and the more subdued wedgewood blue and white 59 Ford were a staple while the yellow Edsel sports a look popular in the later 50s- a time once referred to as the "gold anodized brushed aluminum era". BTW, I was initially concerned by the fact that the Oxford Edsel model was considereably wider than the CMW ford until I discovered that the prototype was, too. From left, a 1967 Ford, 1968 Dodge Chager and a 1974 Corvette illustrate mettalic colors popular in the 1960s and 1970s. I hope some of you might find this useful.
Very good information, and spot on. A few additional observations: In the 1930s, cheaper, smaller cars tended to wear more conservative paint and bigger, status symbol cars were more likely to wear the flashy, "look at me" schemes. That was backwards compared to today. But coupes, roadsters and pheatons were still usually more colorful than sedans. Color choices were indeed limited until the fifties, and semi-custom jobs like woody wagons were usually available in only one or two colors. The late fifties were indeed a riot of colors, but the early fifties saw colors as conservative as the forties (but still saw more variety than today's fifty shades of gray). Back then, making silver paint that would stay stuck to the car was a technology of the future. Battleship gray was common enough in the forties, but silver was unheard of until the sixties, and even then, if the car was ten years old the paint was usually looking ratty. Yes, muscle cars wore paint that made them look like Popsicles in the late sixties and early seventies. But most cars weren't Road Runners and GTOs. For realistic streets, paint every fourth car beige. Brown, bronze and beige beige beige. For that era, keep painting cars beige until you can't stand it any more, then paint one more beige. And white. Appliance white was and is boring, hard to keep clean, and strangely popular. As the seventies progressed, deep chocolate brown had a fashionable phase. Vinyl tops allow for more variety. And moving beyond paint--remember, in 1970 only hard core rednecks called light trucks "cars". Don't put whitewalls/white stripe tires on trucks if you model a year prior to 1974. Trucks often came with grilles and bumpers painted the body color or white right through the 1960s; chrome was an option. And when modeling an older, more decrepit car in any era from the forties through the eighties, mix whitewalls and blackwalls. And maybe lose a wheel cover/dog dish hubcap or two (though dog dishes were less likely to be stolen or come off in hard cornering). Also remember: The reason whitewalls disappeared off the face of the earth is getting and keeping them clean was more work than most people were willing to do. Graywalls are more realistic.
The time of Ford's Model T was easy. Henry Ford said can get any color as long as it is black. So much simpler at that time.
Not really. The "any color as long as it's black" era only lasted a few years, as that policy did a lot to put Chevrolet on the map. And while Tin Lizzies outsold everything else, there were far more different carmakers then than now. That was also the era when body, fenders and wheels were likely to all be different colors. But there were carmakers back then that put black fenders on everything for the same reason. That way they only had to find room to store bodies and butterfly hoods, not complete cars, in out of the dust while the slower-to-dry colors of paint cured.
I've got a crap load of N scale vehicles, many of them I purchased from TB member Rasputen. Here's a few pics of them at various places on my layout. I found a paint color index website on line that I used as reference. Here's the link if you are interested... Auto Color Library - We will match ANY Car Paint Color! Some of the colors were close enough to hobby paints I found at LHS or other shops. Some required a little mixology to get a "close enough" match.
Oops. Yeah, you're right. The 68 was the "Dukes of Hazzard" version. You're also right about the beige cars. My mother had a beige 67 Galaxie and my aunt owned a beige 67 cougar. I think one of the big reasons for that (at least where I come from) was that, if you lived on a gravel road, it didn't show the dust as much, so you could get away with not washing it as often. I now realize that beige is under represented both in my collection and in manufacturers' offerings as a whole.
Update: I just looked at some street views from the 60s online. Yep, there were beige cars, but the percentage of various colors appears to have varied regionally. Dark colors predominated in N.Y.C., while light metallics were more common in California. I did, however, find a view of a street in Oklahoma, where there seemed to be a preponderance of light colors running from white to beige. Interesting variation in color preferences. Finally, the most useful data to me came from a photo of Pigeon, MI about an hour up the road from me. Yep, there were some light colored cars (beige and white), but the country folks in beautiful, exciting Pigeon were driving a whole range of cars in red, metallic blues and greens, metallic gold and black. Looked kind of like Mr. Hedley's parking lots for what it's worth.
