Re: Alfa colors

["John Hertzman" <johnhertzman@domain.elided>]

In AD8-0143 George asks "Is there anyplace on the Internet where I can find
official Alfa paint color specifications? Or does anyone have them or know of
a source?"

 "Specifications" is an ambiguous term in this context. There are a couple of
serious attempts at offering a comprehensive list of Alfa's names for their
colors and Alfa's company codes for those named colors, usually (since the
mid-sixties) three digits preceded by the letters AR; Wille Roos runs one such
list at http://www.veloce.nu, Christopher Boles runs another at
http://www.rasor.com/alfa/open1.htm. They are all, despite the best of
intentions, somewhat problematical because Alfa changed their numbering
systems on several occasions and changed paint formulations on others, and
changed names for different markets as well as occasionally changing the name
of a color for different years within a market, while sometimes using the same
name for slightly different colors in different years; so a single specific
color can have two or more AR code numbers, a single code number can represent
two or more very different colors (AR 213, for instance, both olive green and
maroon depending on the year). An example of the problem is the color
"Bluette", which had company code numbers of KF20323, KF17908, and KF22343 at
various times before 1961, then was AR 208 for some period, became AR 506
sometime before 1967 and changing from AR 506 to AR 327 sometime between 1967
and 1969. Six numbers in twelve or fourteen years. It would be a brave man who
tried to say with authority (not just in this case but in scores of parallel
examples) that an AR 327 Bluette in the mid seventies was the same color as a
KF17908 Bluette in the fifties, even if they looked very much the same,
because the same appearance could be achieved with different mixes of pigments
and different resins, therefore possibly becoming different in appearance as
they aged. Some of the changes are well documented; in April 1976 AR 349
became AR 356, 827 became 835 (etc); in September 1973 a different formulation
of acrylic base was introduced for metallic colors, so for a given color name
and number one ordered a type 44 base up to a certain VIN, and type 46 above
that number.

 So it isn't easy, and people like Wille and Chris deserve appreciation and
sympathy. The best information comes from the cars themselves - a sticker on
the underside of the trunk lid which gives the AR number, color name in
Italian, and paint manufacturer (often Italver, the Italian branch of PPG
which sells under the Ditzler name in the USA, but there were other paint
suppliers) and then from the paint suppliers, Ditzler the first choice in the
USA, DuPont an excellent second choice, Glasurit and Sikkens two excellent
northern European brands used by Alfa and distributed in the USA. The paint
manufacturers have their code numbers for formulas corresponding to the AR
code numbers and model years, and the Ditzler code is an industry standard
recognized by other paintmakers in the US; taking the number from the trunk
sticker to a Ditzler paint supplier should produce a Ditzler code off of the
supplier's chip charts for recent cars and off lists (without chips) for
earlier cars.

 The one other caveat is that the Alfa factory at Arese (and earlier at
Portello) had one set of colors while Pininfarina, Bertone, Touring, and the
other coachbuilders usually had their own colors, sometimes with the same
names; the "Stellar Blue Metallic" on a 1987 Milano (AR 371) is not exactly
the same color as the "Stellar Blue Metallic" on a 1987 Spider (AR 370); the
red used on 1981 Spiders and GTV 6s (AR 501) is not the same as the AR 514 red
used on the '82 Spider or the AR 530 red used on the '82 GTV 6 - and so it
goes.

 Hope that helps - at least as a caution -

 John H.

Raleigh, N.C.

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