Colour Schemes

A few exceptionally well specified interiors had needlepoint upholstery or woven silk damask. Velvet was not used as far as I know - a red "Dralon" interior usually means a wedding car or worse.

Owner-driver cars without a division between the front and rear normally had upholstery in the same material throughout, usually leather (cars sold in the American market frequently had cloth throughout: more comfortable in climate extremes). For a car with coloured lower body side panels and black "tops" in UK coachbuilder parlance, denoting the roof, top of bonnet and body sides above the waistline, as well as black mudguards and valances, the interior normally would match the body side panel colour, or tone with it.

There was a fashion in the mid 1930s for contrasting piping on the surrounds to the seats; normally the two seat leather colours matched the two-tone of the body paintwork, with the carpets and edgings in the predominant leather colour. The lightest coloured leathers available were beige and fawn: Parchment and Magnolia were not available then, so the impracticality of light coloured matching carpets was not an issue.

In the Post WWII period, schemes changed: the carpets on cars with very light coloured upholstery tended to match the exterior colour, not the leather, and this approach became widespread even with darker upholstery colours. My own taste would require that these carpets are bound in their same colour, rather than in the upholstery colour, but many examples exist with, say, Royal Blue carpets bound in Parchment leather. The use of contrasting piping continued through the 1950s and 60s: a dark blue car might have grey upholstery piped in dark blue with dark blue carpets, for example. Two-toned cars again might have the leather and its piping matching the paint colours.

A detail on some coachbuilt cars was the supply of linen covers for seats and the door trims. Few have survived complete, but one occasionally sees the rows of fasteners on the door trim edges still in position.

Hoods ("tops" in U.S. parlance). Availability of materials limited the range of colours for folding hoods in the 1920s: they were most commonly fawn or black, either a cloth material such as double duck, Paramatta or Wigan, or grained coach hide, which had a painted finish, but was usually black. If a hood or tonneau cover was supplied, it was usually finished in the same material as the hood.

Later in the 1920s, leather-cloths, which were textured finish cellulosed materials, were occasionally used for folding hoods.  The 20 hp tourer on the left has a leathercloth hood and shows a typical tourer colour scheme where the whole body is in a single colour apart from black mudguards, valances, chassis and wheels. As a slight digression, leathercloth  was more commonly used for closed cars as a roof covering, and on fabric bodies, notably those of Weymann patent construction. The saloon on the right is a fabric body, unusual in being finished like wood planking. "Grained" finishes to look like wood were seen occasionally in the mid 1920s. On large cars, apart from being lighter than metal, leathercloth had the benefit that you would not need as many seams in the covering of a roof compared with hide, which was limited by the size of animal available. It also did not expand and contract as much with humidity. The earliest form of leather-cloth, patent leather was mainly seen on cars of the early 20^th Century either as mudguards or valances between the chassis and running-boards. The shiny finish could be used on a fabric body to simulate painted metal. As with leather, the finish was usually black, but was sometimes finished in colour to match the body paintwork. 

A wider range of stock colours became available with the introduction of mohair hooding materials in the early 1930s. Coach hide continued to be used through the 1930s and up to the present day for the folding part of a landaulette or cabriolet. While open tourers would have no lining to the hood material, so-called "all-weather" tourers, cabriolets and the rear compartments of landaulettes and sedanca drop-head coups would normally be lined with a cloth headlining.

The Barker foursome coup de ville GYD35 on the extreme left has a mohair hood. The interior of 49GY shows the lining to the folding hood of the All-Weather body. This car has a winding division, so that in all respects it is just like a closed car interior - cloth upholstery was not used because the roof opened fully. See above for a picture of the outside of this car. The right-hand picture is a Salmons "Tickford" cabriolet with hood refinished in mohair; this has the body colour carried up into the waist mouldings and window frames, a common feature of this coachbuilder's cabriolet bodies, but generally unusual.

Paintwork. Coachbuilders paint schemes were in many ways dictated by detailed body design and were modified as body construction evolved. A similar example in modern cars has been the gradual integration of impact resisting bumpers from black rubber-covered lumps of metal to black plastic and at the time of writing to body coloured plastic matching and integrated with the body surface. The shapes of brackets, valances and beadings covering panel joins in the early cars were sufficiently fussy that painting them black or a dark colour was a good way to suppress their visibility. Contrasting colour was limited to the bonnet & scuttle sides and the lower panels of the doors & rear, it also emphasised the length of the car.

Until the mid 1920s, the paint finish was coach paint, involving many layers of slow-drying paint, rubbed down between coats and finished with varnish. Regular rubbing down and re-varnishing was a feature of this finish. Through to the 1920s, some cars made for hot climates had the bonnet unpainted, because paint adhesion was poorer than is now possible and blistering with heat was an issue (see the middle car below). Cellulose paint  was introduced around 1926, and near universal at coachbuilders from 1929.

In the 1920s, most cars were two-tone; some open cars were painted in one colour of paint (see the right-hand car restored on the basis of paint scrapings) but most had black mudguards and valances.

Single colours for open and closed cars became more common in the 1930s: technology advances in metal shaping and aluminium welding allowed panels to be wrapped round door edges and frames, while metal roof coverings replaced leather or leathercloth. The fine strips of beading used on panel edges and doors to hide metal panel edges and leather roof tack lines were no longer needed. Doors were extended downward to cover and replace the metal valance between the body floor and the running boards. Running boards themselves were gradually integrated into the line of the front mudguards. Car bodies developed a more sculptured shape with swage lines or raised mouldings picking up light reflections, which gave a rich enough effect when painted in a single colour.

For open cars, the choice of body and upholstery colours was aimed for toning or contrast with each other and with the hood material colour. A blue car might have blue-grey upholstery and a black hood, for example. The difference in surface texture of paint and upholstery makes perfect colour matching difficult, but a number of cars were so done (probably by matching the exterior paint to the upholstery colour received from the supplier, even if it had been specified to match a defined colour). Generally carpet colour matches the leather or cloth of the upholstery, although some open cars would have ribbed rubber or black linoleum flooring, and these latter were frequent in open-drive cars like sedancas de ville, where the employed driver was given practicality rather than luxury.

As mentioned, paint schemes used for many closed luxury car exteriors in the 1920s were commonly in two colours, one of which was usually black. Many early 1920s cars did not have a straight continuation of the bonnet side hinge line along the scuttle to the corner of the windscreen: in these, the top of the bonnet and all the scuttle were coloured as the rest of the body sides. Black was used for the roof and windows down to the bottom of the body side mouldings, also for the chassis, mudguards, and wheel discs. The bonnet and the body sides and rear were in a colour that was normally keyed to the upholstery. Note that many repaints, especially where the car has been made more colourful, have had the wheels or wheel discs painted in the body side colour: these almost always were painted to match the mudguards and roof as built.

Later 1920s and 1930s cars generally had the "tops" in UK coachbuilder parlance, denoting the roof, top of bonnet and body sides above the waistline, in the one colour (black frequently) with the roof, especially once the bonnet hinge line and scuttle edge became a continuous line. Some did have coloured bonnet and scuttle tops matching their sides, but the scuttle rear edge would carry a moulding  which usually at its top would turn to the bottom of the windscreen and be linked to the line of the moulding at the door window sills, allowing the black or "tops" colour to run naturally up the screen pillar. If there is no moulding at the base of the screen pillar, it is unlikely that there would have been an edge to the colour achieved simply by masking the paint. In nearly all cases, coachbuilders used a moulding or swage edge to define the edge between paint colours - a masked edge on a flat surface is nearly unknown.

Some cars featured a traditional coach feature presented on the scuttle sides. This used a beading line to simulate the shape of the front of a "Brougham" style of coach (a horse-drawn Hooper Brougham is shown here as an example). The car on the left is on a 1928 New Phantom Park Ward limousine 52AL, and on the right is a 1929 20hp James Young Weymann saloon.

Through the 1920s up to around 1931, the roof of a closed car (saloon or limousine) was either covered in coach hide or a leather-cloth, most commonly in black to go with the remaining black paint on the tops, but was sometimes painted to tone or match the body colour. Cars with an opening roof: a cabriolet, sedanca de ville, or a landaulette would normally use black coach hide for both the folding and fixed part of the roof. Hide continued to be used for these styles for longer. "Sunshine" roofs began to be installed in the late 1920s, and were usually covered in the same material as the rest of the roof, although some retained leathercloth coverings when the rest of the roof had become all metal. The 20 hp Barker cabriolet de ville on the left has a leather roof, and is an example of wood grained finish, including the mudguards and valances. The 1932 Barker sedanca de ville 20/25 hp GHW66 shown at the right has a leather roof and also shows the classic two-tone colour split, but with the bonnet top matching its sides, but with a black hinge extending the moulding line below the windows.

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, two-colour tones became more frequent, especially in owner-driver cars: two shades of grey, two shades of blue, two shades of green, or fawn and brown were popular. The split between the two colours was often as before, with the tops, wings and wheel discs the darker shade. The upholstery could match either shade. It was not common to have upholstery in a different colour from the two-tone, but not impossible: a two-tone blue car could have had blue-grey upholstery. Once the roof was of metal construction, the potential to colour it and the bonnet top the same as the body sides was greater. Such schemes usually had the mouldings in the darker colour matching the mudguards and wheel discs (see GAU16 above in the upholstery section and GRC25 on the left). The car on the right is, I think, a Park Ward 25/30 hp with a colour split more often seen on Post WWII cars, where the body sides and mudguards have the lighter shade of grey. It was photographed at Finchingfield in Essex in the late 1960s.

A very few experiments were made with three colours of paint: the Park Ward 20/25 hp GEX76 on the left was (and has now been restored to this scheme) in pale blue with a darker blue moulding. The roof was in silver aluminium paint and the wheel discs in polished alloy, with seats in the darker blue and piping in the pale shade. However, a safe approach is never to have more than three colours for a cars exterior and interior (and that rule includes the hood of an opening body).Hooper's 1932 show 20/25 hp GMU68 moved to polished waist-line mouldings and polished discs, but retained darker mudguards and valances.

Both of these cars have a raised chrome strip which incorporates the door handle escutcheons, blending the handles into the lines, a feature carried through on bodies after WWII.

In the mid 1930s, the Depression influenced owners of expensive cars to be less ostentatious by using single colours in darker shades: dark blue (blue was the most popular colour for the body sides in the 1920s), dark green, maroon, and black. Black became more common for owner-driver cars, not just on formal limousines. However the waistline moulding was often painted in a contrasting colour, frequently keyed to the upholstery colour, so a dark blue car might have light blue upholstery with a matching moulding, for example. The use of chromium as mouldings, or applied to the moulding, was another way of relieving the monotony. Raised ribs on the top of mudguards, reverse curves, knife-edge styling were other ways of making the look of a single colour car more interesting. The Barker brougham de ville GBK36 shows the use of knife-edge styling and polished mudguard edges, as well as the forward sweeping raised moulding on the scuttle.

The 3 litre Park Ward coup de ville B135EJ shows a very restrained contrasting moulding, which treatment could have been on a black car.

On a car originally painted in a single colour, the mouldings may permit two-toning, either because the design could accommodate either, or because it had a number of moulding or swaging lines to add interest to the shape of a dark single coloured body. In later 1930s cars the raised moulding may run down behind the rear doors ahead of the front of the rear mudguards or split to run both horizontally around the car rear and down ahead of the rear mudguards. In the former case the car the contrasting paint tone would be on the bonnet and door panels, but the rear of the car would be in the same colour as the roof and mudguards. In the latter case the boot would be in the contrasting colour. However, many bodies had mouldings that ended on the rear quarter of the body, giving no line for separation of contrasting colours. Several owners of such cars in modern times have made the separation as continuation of the moulding line, or by using the rear shut line of the rear door as the separation. Neither is correct, nor usually looks it.

The example on the extreme left on a Phantom III Barker sedanca 3CP186 uses the door shut in an unrelated way to the chrome moulding (the car was all black when I first knew it); it also would normally have black discs even if two-toning was original. The other picture is of a modern colour scheme on a 25/30hp GLP34 Thrupp & Maberly saloon. This does make use of a swage line, but creates what I feel is not a happy transition between the colours. Wheel discs matching the darker tone may help. The car was originally a single dark colour as shown in the bottom picture on p 223 of "Those Elegant Rolls-Royce".

In one or two sporting designs, as a fore-runner of two-tone treatments that were common post WWII, the front and rear mudguards were different colours, often with the front ones matching the bonnet and body sides, and the rears matching the roof and boot - but not always (a dropping band of colour running back from the bonnet sides could encompass the rear mudguards, leaving the front ones matching the top of the car).

 

Fine lining. From coaching days, coachbuilders emphasised features of the bodywork with fine lines on raised mouldings. This continued into motor-cars. Although in the 1930s, contrasting coloured or chromium plated shaped mouldings were introduced, lining was still an option. Normally a single fine line would be placed on the raised moulding just above the point at which the lower edge curves to meet the panel below. Especially where the top of the bonnet and scuttle matched their sides, the line might split at the scuttle and run at top and bottom of the waistline, converging again at the rear, as in the example shown here far left. This could also be done on either side of a chrome strip. The other example shows lining on a single colour car outlining the bonnet and waist moulding, but terminating at the convergence point because the moulding was not continued onto the rear quarter: lining without an associated raised edge was nearly unknown.

It was very unusual to line on the panel just below the moulding (I do not say "never" because there are examples in the records, but hardly any) except where an archaic scheme allied to the style of horse-drawn coaches was being featured, often associated with "box-lining" on the car bonnet.  An aesthetic reason for not lining on the panels was the presence of the raised beading on the door edges, which look wrong if the line runs over these. Before bonnet side hinges were covered and scuttles had a bead extending the line of the bonnet hinge, the line would start on or just ahead of the front door moulding. The example shown here (with the owner's permission) has lining on the panels more reminiscent of a motor coach. Note also that the wheels have been painted in the body side colour: unlikely to be authentic.

For a chromium moulding on a later car, the line would either run in the conventional position on the lower edge of the body moulding on which the chromium moulding is imposed, or about 3/16 inch (4.5 mm) below and above the chromium moulding on a plain panel, although I would urge restraint in this case.

When refinishing a car, I would suggest not lining it until you have had a chance to review the look without it. The coachbuilders specification may have mentioned lining, but not always the detail of the execution: fine line in ivory on body moulding might be all you have to go on. The lining colour might have been part of a family coach colour scheme and therefore closely defined.

Some cars in the later 1930s had multiple lines, usually two, in different colours, one of these was usually near white, the other picking up the upholstery colour. Splitting of the lines could be also used where a chromium moulding was superimposed on the main body moulding, and even, as in the example here on a James Young Wraith, could themselves be multiple.

 

In addition to the moulding lines, other parts of the car might be lined. 1920s cars with plain discs might carry a line on them (in this case without a raised moulding). The raised rings on wheel discs of 1930s cars were often lined at their highest points although cars with a single colour and contrasting body moulding might simply have the ring in the moulding colour. When the rings became chrome ones, they might carry lines on one or both sides, but only if the body's chrome moulding was similarly treated. Louvres on bonnets were sometimes lined on the extreme edges - a practical feature because the paint tends to get worn off these edges and re-lining is cheaper than re-finishing the bonnet. Lining louvre edges was more common on Bentleys than R-Rs. The raised ribs on the front apron ahead of the radiator were  sometimes lined, especially if the louvres were too.

Choice of lining colour is usually dictated by other car colours: black cars would normally have lining to tone with the upholstery, but if this was a dark shade, often the line would be in off-white, ivory, or cream. It was quite normal to use the same colour as the upholstery, but a lighter or stronger shade to make the line show more strongly. On a car with matching interior and exterior colour, the line was usually a lighter shade of the same. The same approach would be taken on a car two-toned in black and a colour: the line would be on the black body moulding in a shade matching or lighter than the body colour. Red was sometimes used to contrast with another body colour such as blue or green.

Gold leaf was not used, simply because you cannot get a sharp enough edge laying it onto a line of adhesive: there is no ability to burnish or tool the line on a non-resilient surface. Gold paint was not commonly used because the line was too fine for it to register: a golden yellow paint would be preferred.

Lines were normally about 1/16 inch (1.5 mm) wide, applied in an oil-bound paint (making it easier to clean off the cellulose finish if a mistake was made). Modern lining tapes are no substitute, as they always show hard edges.