[Healeys] Carmine Red vs Reno red

Earl Kagna kags at shaw.ca
Fri Apr 10 17:51:12 MDT 2015


Carmine Red vs Reno redChris:

I’ve been watching this discussion with interest.  I’ve been looking through my copy of the Austin-Healey guide to historic colours by Donald Pikovnic.  I believe that the book is well researched and fairly accurate.  It reveals that Reno Red was carried over from the BN1 / BN2  cars for the early BN4’s, until Dec. 1956, when Colorado Red replaced it and was used to the end of production.  We now know that the colour did change slightly over the course of production, and that any red tended to fade slightly darker pretty quickly.  OEW was never a factory duotone option on red Healeys, but I have seen cars done that way and they looked very good to me.

The red used for the interior was in fact pretty dark – not exactly tending towards real dark, but rather a sort of ‘plummy’ red.  One wouldn’t think that it would work well, but it did – my BT7 tri-carb is Colorado Red with the original red interior – restored, because parts of it had faded to brown.  I can send you a decent quality photo or two to ease your mind as to how it would look in a finished car.  (this is a gold level concours car, so it’s pretty accurate)

I can also try my best to scan and send the pages in the colour guide book showing all the reds used for big Healeys (there were actually 4).  These scans will have the mfg code and the old ICI code information included, which may help you get a modern paint code for the colours.  Bear in mind that there are limitations in scanning high quality paint or cosmetic colour samples, and I suggest a good quality colour monitor for viewing.  I’ve done a couple of test scans – they’re not too bad, maybe it will help you.

Let me know.

Earl Kagna
Victoria, B.C.
BJ8, BT7 tri-carb

From: Chris Scholz 
Sent: Friday, April 10, 2015 12:10 PM
To: Richard Collins 
Cc: healeys at autox.team.net 
Subject: Re: [Healeys] Carmine Red vs Reno red

I cannot find a paint code for Reno red. I picked out a maroon and it looked poor with OEW. I would like to find the exact color for Reno red and paint a sample panel against OEW. Does anyone have an idea on the code for Reno red?  It is more rare. 

Sent from my iPhone 
Chris Scholz OD
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