Grigio Flemington

The subject of this week's post is colour, a troubling issue for restorers of Italian cars who have been known to lose their minds over exactly what shade of red their treasure should be painted when the actual issue is what hue.
The first time I saw my Lancia Flavia in Auckland in the mid-1980s it was painted a sort of generic 'Italian red'. Judging by the traces left on the car it was far too bright and this impression gels with my memory of inspecting it at the Newmarket Car Fair and passing it over. There were too many other things wrong with it and the colour was just one issue. I did not know at the time but the car was originally a mid-grey the Italians called Grigio Tor di Valle. A similar colour was a rare offering on British cars including Mk II Jaguars and MGBs and made both cars look distinctive, if simply that the colour was so unassuming on a sporting vehicle.
One of the key things about choosing colour for a car is understanding the semantics of its design. The reason Lancia Flavias look wrong in red is the reason that 3.8 litre Mk II Jaguars look right. One is a road burner and the other is not. Red draws attention to features both good and bad. It plays well with chrome which the Jaguar has a lot of, particularly if on wire wheels The Lancia is a front wheel drive car and slightly awkward in its proportions although glorious in its details. The Jaguar is undeniably 'right' and the Lancia not so. I wanted it to look both striking and dignified as I imagine its profile was in the early 1960s. This took me down the path of Italian greys and much deep thought.
If you were in the market for a Flavia Coupe in 1964 you could have bianco Saratoga (white), three greys including grigio York, Tor di valle and Doncaster, rosso Chester (red but not the ubiquitous rosso Corsa), bleu Mendoza (a strange blue-green), bleu Lancia and nero (black). There were no metallic colours offered. The coupes were built at the Pininfarina plant in Turin and they used different formulations than those applied to the saloons built by Lancia in their own factory. Although designed by Pininfarina, the four door car was no beauty but tended to look less awful in dark metallic colours. There was a very dark grey offered on the early saloon called Grigio Flemington. It made the dumpy lines almost attractive and I began to wonder what it would do for the coupe. 
Web searches for Grigio Flemington - Italians liked the posh sound of English racecourse names - produced the above picture of a Maserati Ghibli painted in this very dark grey. The effect was what I thought the Coupe needed, more definition on its length and less emphasis on the unhappy parts of the design, mainly the short wheelbase and heavy nose. So, not original but a colour applied to the best looking Italian car of the period. Pictures of the freshly painted Lancia to follow so you can judge whether this is a good decision or not.