Havana

[GT6-MK3]

My car was originally havana brown and it now needs sooner or later a respray so I've been searching the forum and google for pictures of cars painted this colour. I haven't come across too many but if anyone out there has some pics or indeed a car this colour I'd love to see it. Trying to decide which way to go. Thanks

Nigel

[PaulMcElhinney]

Nigel I've just checked my paint swatch book, I only have Brazilia. Good luck.

[GT6-MK3]

No worries paul, thanks for looking. Just checking Richards book and havana was the fifth most popular paint on the mk3's. Cant see that being the case nowadays. But there must be some old pics knocking about?

[Han Kamp]

No worries paul, thanks for looking. Just checking Richards book and havana was the fifth most popular paint on the mk3's. Cant see that being the case nowadays. But there must be some old pics knocking about?

I am not an expert on Interceptors. Browsing through my images I found several 'browns', but cannot be sure if it is Cheviot, Havana or Brasilia. Even Claret may see brown on photo's. It is hard to tell from a photo as each camera has differences and lighting has influence too.
Perhaps it is one of these:

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47.jpg (248.84 KiB) Viewed 3773 times

101.jpg (263.85 KiB) Viewed 3773 times

Images courtesy of JOC.

[Richard Calver]

Paint questions arise all the time and are not easy to answer, not in a practical way. Those three pics Han posted show (allegedly) Cassis, Claret and something blackish looking on what was once a blue car. Unless you are looking at a period pic of an original factory paint job, you can't get the right idea this way. In fact, even if you find original factory imagery, you still can't get a perfect rendition because of the limits of the medium.

A period image is on a negative. By the time you come to see it, it is on a positive. Someone printed it. They could have done that many ways. If they go back and print it again, it will not be the same. By the time you see it on your computer, that old print has already been aging for decades. A halide image naturally deteriorates. By the time you see it, it has been scanned on some colour system you don't know, transmitted across some other colour system, read on your computer system (which is probably another colour system again) and seen with your eyes, which could be in any condition.

You cannot get a match this way, only an idea. The best you will get in words is something along the lines of "it looks a bit darker than that on my car, a bit more chocolatey, but without the sheen". This is no basis on which to work.

If the image is of a restored car, forget about colour matching altogether. You have no idea what paint is on that car and anyway the digital image, like the print image, was made on some system you don't know, transmitted via some system you don't know, photoshopped maybe, viewed on a monitor whose calibration you don't know and then registered through eyes to a brain whose calibration you also don't know.

Ten percent of men are mostly colour blind. That's why they test you for the licence. Everyone sees things differently.

OK, you are fortunate to have original factory colour chips but these are now 40 to 50 years old and were not great matches originally. You don't know what they would have looked like in the 1970s. Even Jensen in their finest factory brochure couldn't get Cerise reproduced right.

My latest book has CMYK representations of many of the colours but they are just estimations. They are in there so that people can get a rough idea of the colours, but you can't get good matching by looking at ink on paper any more than you can by looking at someone's processed photo on your screen.

So, what's the solution? The answer is in your hands. You have the actual car. Somewhere on it is the original paint. Unless the car was totally stripped and dipped in a bath, that paint is still in the hidden areas. You can get it analysed and matched. This is what professionals do all the time. If you get it done to a high standard, you will have the best match you can get. You then get a sample pot, get it sprayed on a big bit of metal, let it cure, polish it, take it into the sunlight, turn it different ways and then you will know what it looks like in reality. Paper, swatches and prints are viewed in reflected light. Computer screens are seen via transmitted light. Neither is close to reality on a car but your eyes make the adjustment and tell your brain what it thinks it is seeing.

You can take pictures of the same car from different angles or in different lighting conditions and the paint will look different. Book producers have the same trouble, trying to get multiple photos of the one car to actually look the same on the printed page. If you look at page 231 of my book, you will see 8888 (Mustard) in original period images, but the colour shift over the years (and the different settings in which the car was photographed) made it very difficult to get realism into the reproduced images, with a brownish look predominating rather than the more accurate colour (to my eyes anyway) as shown on 1124 at page 227.

You may be fortunate in that someone has already done the code matching for your colour and is prepared to give you their codes. It may be that such codes are still useful to the guy who is in your paint shop, if he is using the same ingredients. However, it may be that whoever gives you their codes didn't get a great match anyway, or had it modified slightly to please his wife, so if you use his codes you will just perpetuate his errors.

If you are not sure, do it yourself on your own car. It's the only way to get it dead right. The next best way is to get a big book of swatches from your paint guy and sit down with the car and try to find something which matches the original paint you find in a hidden area.

You may find that a big manufacturer has some of the cross-codes to the original Jensen colours which could be useful. You don't know how those cross codes were obtained or whether they are accurate so again, to be sure, get a sample pot made up, get it sprayed and see what your eyes make of it.

All this stuff is highly interpretative and subjective. The best you will get from looking at pictures is an idea of what something should look like. After that, it's all experimentation and personal taste, tweaking, tinting and so on.

Another thing to remember is that modern two-pack is not the Jensen type of paint. Depending on when your car was made, it was finished in air drying cellulose, low bake cellulose or acrylic. You can't have authenticity in the paint, regardless of what you achieve with the colour rendition, if you are in the wrong type of paint altogether.

Most people don't go to the lengths required to get authentic paint on the restored car. Usually whatever is available is good enough, and most people change the colour anyway so it hardly matters. Jensen had different formulas for the same paint back in the day too, just to make it harder.

If you do go down the route of trying to recreate the proper paint, then post the results so that others who come along and face the same issues will have something to go by. This is especially so for the Carrs codes.

Good luck!

[GT6-MK3]

Thanks for the reply's gents.

I understand both of you're points about original prints, fading, lighting, computer screens etc. Richard like you say the reason I am looking for pictures of cars this colour is just to get an idea or sense of what an interceptor looks like with it.

Your suggestion of find the original colour on my car is actually what I did yesterday. Under 3 coats of black and primer I found a very thin coat of what seems to be brown. Safe to assume this is havana.

There is a small bit of damage on the drivers door. So what I'm thinking is to fix the damage and strip it down to the brown, there is a paint suppliers here that has tool called a magic eye. They can take a reading from the paint and come up with a mix to match it. So I'll be able to then do my sample.

That being said I know older paint had a tendency for the pigments to fade quicker than paints nowadays. Any paint experts out there know whether the older paint came back to "life" with a good polish.

I want to have the mechanical's finished fully before I tackle the paint and like Richard suggested I'll post the results up here

[GT6-MK3]

Some beautiful pictures shawn conway (scjensen) sent me. I'd still still be interested is seeing some more if anyone has any. Thanks

[VFK44]

That is gorgeous. Bring back brown! (...and gold).

[Keith]

I've got Havana in my swatch book. It can only describe it as milk chocolate with a slightly grey tinge. It is a solid colour, and not metallic.

Here's a scan, it won't look the same on your monitor as it will on mine, but it will give you an idea. I'd pull the door cards off. There's bound to be some unfaded Havana under there.

[taximan]

The best original paint on my car is under the insulation on the inner wing covered in underseal, once underseal is removed with white spirit the colour is true as has not been exposed to sunlight.
Shaun.

[felixkk]

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[felixkk]

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[felixkk]

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[NickA]

Try this one, found in Qatar.

http://www.joc.org.uk/phpBB2/viewtopic. ... 85#p100314" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[GT6-MK3]

Thanks for the pics, links and scans of the swatches guys

Keith, I have the door cards off at the minute and after 3 resprays in black there isn't much brown left other than some misty overspray.

Shawn, the insulation and underseal on the inner wings are in great condition and I don't want to lose the originality of them.

Felix, it would be great if you were able to get me some details, as they say the more the merrier.

At the moment I'm not particularly keen on the solid colour Havana, I'm slightly leaning towards a slight metallic twist. I think this with a gold coach line and the tan top of the convertible should look really good. But I'll have to wait till I do some samples.