Gold saga

Gold is gold - right? It is not that simple, as I have been discovering ever since I decided to restore my Trans Am back to it's original factory colour of Solar Gold ( GM Code 50 ). Gold can appear very different depending on the conditions.

Take the picture shown below. All five images are of my car just taken at different times and locations - the same vehicle!

After going around in circles and getting more confused with colour swatches, I called on the services of my sprayer. He said in order to judge the true colour and tones, the paint needs to be actually sprayed onto a surface, so this is exactly what he did.

This first example shows a bumper sprayed with two very different golds, and then viewed in different light conditions. The left-hand photo is in direct sunlight, and the right hand one is in overcast conditions - the same bumper!

The exercise was then repeated with another scrap piece of bumper and two different golds.

This frustrating saga carried on like this for some time ( quite a long time actually ).

My only consolation was that apparently General Motors themselves had encountered many problems matching the colour

We both agreed that the most important thing was to go for a gold colour that was not too "modern", but would be more in character with the vehicle of that age. The colour we chose was fairly close to 1970's Solar Gold and is shown in the pictures below.

As before the same panel is viewed in different light, the left hand one is in bright sunlight and the right hand is in overcast conditions. The next stage is now to paint the inside of one of the doors in this colour and hopefully proceed from there - the saga continues.