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I am doing some detailing on my 41 120 and I am looking for a source for the correct red paint for the hood medallions. I am hoping there is a rattle can of the right color. Does anyone know??

Also, I am looking for a good source for packard touch-up colors. Even though I am careful, I still pickup a ding from a rock or something occasionally. My car is Algiers Blue Metalic over Legion blue Metalic, but the paint places I have talked to have no luck doing a cross over. Again, any help would be appreciated.

Not sure if the hood medallian is the same as the red hexagon on the hubcaps, but I have heard a few people say the color is very close to standard Testor's Red. (Found at a quality Hobby store near you)

Sherwin Williams used to make an alkyd enamel called "Flame Red" which was a very good match for the hubcaps.

For your touch-up you might try Tower Paint (see advertisement in Hemmings); they've mixed several original colors for me in rattle cans for touch-up and the matches were excellent. Perhaps they'd pack in cans rather than aerosol if that's what you wanted. If not, try having the existing color scanned by a good paint shop. It's amazing what great results can be obtained.

Kev is right - Testor's RED is right on !

But for touching up a metallic paint job. Bad news. It is almost impossible to do it. Even if you have the very same paint left over from the original job.

A REALLY good paint shop using REALLY good technique SOMETIMES can do an entire panel re-shoot that is good enough to get by. But that's beyond my pay grade..and I was taught how to do paint by a genuine master who once worked at Murphy/Pasadena !

This is why I personally dont want metallic paints on any of my vehicles. Sooner or later you are going to scratch something, and want to touch it up. With solid colors, especially if you use the authentic old-style nitrocellulose lacquer, you can do this.

I strongly recommend whenever you paint a car, save some from the job in a can with a VERY good seal.

This is another reason, when you are doing a older car, to use the authentic nitro-celluslose lacquer. Sure the modern two-part or "three-part" paints are VASTLY superior in terms of both durability, shine, and color retention. But once you mix em with the hardener, that's it - use them up or lose your spray gun !

But most of us dont leave our Packards out for extended periods in severe weather and baking sun. So we dont need the durability - with our kind of use, a "authentic" paint job with "authentic" materials is going to last longer than we are...! And those super high gloss finishes you see on show-cars. That is NOT the way they looked when new. I like to see older cars painted to look like they REALLY did.

I agree that I would rather see these older cars in the original paint as opposed to the hi-gloss finishes many show cars are painted today. The matalic colors used on my 120 are the factory colors, I am just trying to find a place to match them. I will give Tower a shot. It may not be a perfect match. but probably an improvement over a noticable ding.

Though some folks can't be convinced and make other choices, the art & color professionals who selected colors for the automakers were generally very skilled in their craft and it's very difficult although I suppose not impossible to find colors or combinations that look better than those orginally offered.

As to paint types, about 60% of my 1934 Eight is still original nitrocellulose lacquer (black) and still much too good to consider repainting, it has held up extremely well. The same can't be said for some of the earlier metallic lacquers. When I had my 56 Caribbean repainted, I considered lacquer and really wanted it until my paint shop (a full service restoration shop with many Pebble Beach cars under their belt) convinced me I could have the best of both worlds, the look of lacquer and the durability advantages of base coat/clear coat. And I think they accomplished it, almost everyone who sees the car can't believe it's not lacquer.

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Reds seem to be a problem. The best thing to do is take a sample to a QUALIFIED paint store to match by eye or paint equipment that can match it by somekind of machine they have. GOOD luck finding a paint store with qualified people to do it.


REDS seem to "orange out" over a period of 15 to 20 years no matter how careful one is to keep the car out of the sun or other harmful environments. I had often heard this from various professional painters over the years but never experienced it my self until about 10 years ago.

I have a 48 Chief painted DD acrylic laq. FACTORY PACK 64 chevy Granada red. Painted at my own hand using all DD products about 1973. In '96 i had to touch up the rear fender. Used the left over paint from the EXACT SAME CAN i had painted from 20 years earlier. THe shade difference is astounding. The 73 shade was a dark, almost maroon red and so was the touch up 20 years later. BUT the paint around it had turned a brighter red and almost orangish compared to the dark red.

For over 10 years there were many arguments in the Indian world over "Indian Red". What was correct and what wasn't. It became an indepth analysis by many qualified veteran Indian owners, dealers etc. Red was popular on Indians in their day. There are even owners that have NOS parts still in storeage with original paint.

After many years of argueing and analysis everyone, even the most stubborn, determined that there is really no way to determione EXACTLY what shade of red is correct or incorrect due do ageing and i suppose chemical break down etc.

It's strictly a guessing game and one can get close. But noone really has any benchmarks for correct shades. Only correct shades that have aged over the years.

For those looking for hubcap touchup, PAC also still advertises the accessory red Scotchlite reflective hexagons. Might be an option for some.