Lancia Motor Club

My 1938 Aprilia needs some body work done this autumn. If the amount of paintwork involved reaches a certain point, I shall consider whether to repaint the whole car in a more appropriate colour instead of the current cheerful, but very unoriginal, baby blue.

Is anyone able to help with samples, codes, photographs or any other clues as to the colours used by Lancia in the late 1930s, as if I do repaint I would like to add some originality? My car has a dark blue Alperton leather interior, so blue or grey colours would l imagine be the obvious choices for a repaint. Period photographs seem to show some surprisingly light colours, which I would favour for reasons of visibility. Any information at all on period colours would be welcome however.

Ciao a tutti
Cesare

This is the list of original colours for the Aprilia.

Thank you for this interesting list.

If anyone has photos or any other clues to give visible form to any of the names of colours in the left column and the footnotes I would be most grateful!

Cesare

Cesare

Do you think there will be any clues as to what your car was originally painted?

Area (door recesses, window recesses etc) untouched by human hand after all these years?

Traces of past paintwork on the body of my car are pretty well obliterated, I fear. The dashboard however is a different colour, probably being from a different car as well, and might be a factory finish. It is a medium to dark grey colour that I do not dislike, but a dull one. As I have said if there is a more visible colour I would favour that for safety grounds.

Also, at the AGM Rossella, Marcello Minerbi's widow, told me how glad she was to see an Aprilia in a cheerful colour, as she associated them with dark colours and dark times. That too made me think again about the grey reference that I have.

Cesare

Getting current versions of period colors is quite difficult. Matching a sample seems like a good idea, but they have faded with 60+ years of oxidation. Sometimes you can find paint in a hidden area (glovebox, under air vents, door jambs) unfaded for matching.

The other way is to go to Lechler, who in the early 1990s, stepped up to the plate and posted a chart of old Italian car paints and their current equivalents. The chart doesn't list Aprilias, but has Ardeas, probably similar.

I think there more information than just this page - you can go back to Lechler, that is, you can ask them about your model and see what they have on file. Its been several years but some information was confusing, without clear differences between the series or the specials. . Still, they are your best bet. Some folks have found samples of these colors, but only in Europe.

Thank you GG. It appears there is no easy way to establish pre-war Aprilia colours. Perhaps I must hope that the paintwork needed on my car is  not so extensive as to prompt a colour change. I actually like it as it is, and have tried to attach a photo of it but without success.
Cesare

If you like the look of any of the Ardea colours I guess a good car paint supply shop ( we have 3 alone in Colchester) could make a sample of the Lechler code for you to assess??

Hi Cesare, I like your car colour very much and for the reasons said - it's cheerful !

Luckily , your car is on the LMC news page here :

(http://img.lanciamconline.co.uk/public/Vehicles/LMC-2782-166552.jpg)

and here ( which is the picture used when it was on the NEC stand )

(http://img.lanciamconline.co.uk/public/Vehicles/LMC-AUJ270-132562.jpg)

To put these pictures on the Forum thread, all I did was did the image URL from the internet eg :

http://img.lanciamconline.co.uk/public/Vehicles/LMC-2782-166552.jpg

and then when I posted it on the forum I prefixed it with [ img ] and then suffixed with [ / img ] to tell the forum an image was between the two img tags .... ( note that with the [ img ] parts that there are NO SPACES - I just put the spaces there so you could see what I was typing in )

At one time, there were discussions about a paint shop making up swatches of these paints. As the Lechler paints aren't available over in the US, the idea was make a series of 12" painted square, to be cut in parts, for both the American and British club to have a current paintbook. Didn't go anywhere, but it's still an idea....

Lancia Blue 1961 is on the technical information thread page iv.

Thank you all for your helpful suggestions. If I do paint my Aprilia a new colour I shall be sure to post  picture of it.
Cesare

This may be helpful if the same colours continued through to the Aprilia. I found a decent bit of paint that had been covered upon our 1934 Augusta and had it identified as "Fiat  456 (0456) blue notte"