Color is basically dead in modern motoring. We went from the Model T\u2019s \u201cany color\u2026 so long as it\u2019s black\u201d to a \u201960s Pantone catalog of hues, and now the pendulum has swung back. Fifty Shades of Grey<\/em>might as well be a sign outside your local Audi dealer.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Manufacturers have tightened up available paint choices because dealers like to stock units that can move quickly. It\u2019s relatively easy to persuade an impatient shopper into a crossover painted \u201cMagnetite,\u201d even if that person showed up on the lot wanting a dark blue. Or at least it used to be easy, in the days before the chip shortage<\/a> shriveled dealer stocks and upended the industry. Maybe, if we\u2019re lucky, the silver lining of current supply restrictions will be a return to more vibrant parking lots.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Either way, we probably won\u2019t see again the sort of market variety that which produced the Paint Chip \u2019Cuda. In 1970, a picture of this brilliant Mopar invited potential customers to taste the rainbow<\/a>. The car appeared in a brochure for Plymouth options, its body covered in no fewer than 25 shades of factory paint. Along with accessories like pistol-grip shifters, tachometers, and a ram-air intake (\u201cit shakes and quivers with every lope of the cam, Rumpa-rumpa-rumpa\u2026<\/em>\u201d) the car\u2019s profile shot was a clever way to show how Plymouth had the competition beat for variety. \u201cPerformance alone does not a supercar make,\u201d the copy boasted.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Plymouth<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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It should be noted that modern-day Dodge still offers a reasonably broad color palette. However, the current Challenger makes do with fourteen shades, and that range can\u2019t match the vibrancy of, say, a Lime Light (FJ5). It was 1970, you were on your way to see Three Dog Night rock the Milwaukee Auditorium, and your Barracuda\u2019s paint job was as loud as its quad zoomie exhausts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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There\u2019s only one issue with this Technicolor nostalgia bomb: It never existed. Plymouth\u2019s brochure was clever advertising, but the copy was merely ink-deep. The amount of work required to actually paint a car in 25 different shades wasn\u2019t worth the payoff, and so the image in that ad was fake, an illustration.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Such is the nature of the midcentury muscle-car golden age, a time shorter and perhaps less magical than everyone remembers. However, for the kids who grew up watching these cars go door-to-door at stop lights, the hero worship never went away. For collector Tim Wellborn, an obsession with all things Mopar would eventually lead not only to a wide collection of special cars, but also to a three-dimensional realization of 1970s<\/a> advertising genius<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Wellborn Museum<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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Wellborn shared an interest in Dodges with his father, stretching back to the 1971 Charger R\/T 426 Hemi that the latter man bought new. That car is still in the family, part of Alabama\u2019s Wellborn Musclecar Museum, a collection of 1969 through 1971 American performance machines. Housed in a refurbished 1940s Buick dealership in Alexander City, the Wellborn boasts the world\u2019s largest collection of 1971 Dodge Chargers, along with several high-performance variants of Chevrolet Chevelles and Ford Mustangs, and rarities like a Pontiac GTO IV Judge convertible.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Amassing the collection took patience, but assembling the Paint Chip \u2019Cuda took creativity. The donor car, a 1970 Barracuda<\/a> in Ivy Green, came from New Orleans. The car had been sitting for two decades, but it was in solid, original condition. There was a 383 under the hood, and a four-speed manual behind that. In fact, the car\u2019s condition was good enough to present further challenge\u2014Wellborn decided that its history was worth preserving. A blank vinyl wrap was carefully applied to the car\u2019s right half, and the shell was modified to match the Plymouth ad without interfering with the original sheetmetal. Twenty-five lines of paint were individually laid down atop the vinyl skin. The work was done by a New Orleans restoration shop called The Bomb Factory, and the project was completed in 2016.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Gorgan<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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With its asymmetric appearance, right down to the single, right-side rear drag slick, the \u2019Cuda comes off as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hi-def. It also serves as a striking reminder that choice and personalization were once a core part of the car industry.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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$\"\"$ <\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
You can\u2019t go back to the past, but you can take a good hard look over your shoulder and decide what parts of it are worth keeping. When the chip shortage eventually eases, the industry will return to business as usual and monochrome dealer lots. But it doesn\u2019t have to. Futurists can argue that enthusiast favorites like the manual transmission are evolutionary dead-ends, victims of changing tastes and advancing tech. But colors have always moved us. It took 46 years for the Paint Chip \u2019Cuda to exist in the flesh; when you order your next car, maybe it\u2019s worth waiting a few weeks for the color you really want.<\/p>\n
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This article has been reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder, Hagerty. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Click here for more\u00a0<\/em>automotive tips and stories<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, or here for more information on\u00a0the next Pomona Swap Meet & Classic Car Show<\/a><\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":null,"protected":false},"author":103,"featured_media":12240,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cos_headline_score":0,"cos_seo_score":0,"cos_headline_text":"","cos_headline_has_been_analyzed":false,"cos_last_analyzed_headline":[],"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[136,5],"tags":[7528,372,746,7527,7529,230,132,553,1454,355,188],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.pomonaswapmeet.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/Wellborn-Musclecar-Museum-Paint-Chip-Cuda-Advertisement-05-scaled-2.jpg?fit=2048%2C1365&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9nnZN-3bi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pomonaswapmeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12232"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pomonaswapmeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pomonaswapmeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pomonaswapmeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/103"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pomonaswapmeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12232"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.pomonaswapmeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12239,"href":"https:\/\/www.pomonaswapmeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12232\/revisions\/12239"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pomonaswapmeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pomonaswapmeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pomonaswapmeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pomonaswapmeet.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}