Elsewhere in this issue ("Street Rod Trends"), I mention the fact that two of the hot new trends in street rodding are customs and custom paint. Now it's time to show you why. Since the late '80s, manufacturers of automotive finishes have been hard at work developing new, colorful and environmentally friendly paint systems. The reasons are simple. Detroit's switch to aerodynamic styling has led to barb-free envelopes sans eye-catching, shape-defining hiccups. So the makers and suppliers of automotive finishes have developed a series of hot candy/pearl-type colors to help Detroit "eye-track" the buying public to its new-car showrooms. At the same time, a series of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rulings have led to a reduction of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) in paint and the creation of a whole new family of two-part paint systems plus the means—in the form of high-volume/low-pressure (HULP) spray guns—to apply these environmentally friendly coatings.
However, the point of this article is not to talk product or describe application but to illustrate what can be created using today's crop of eye-dazzling, tree-hugging painting systems. With the help of DuPont Automotive Finishes, Hot Rods By Boyd's Greg Morrell and the high-zoot paint jobs orbiting some current rodneys, we're going to show and tell our readers the good news. No doubt about it, the given-up-for-dead, colorful, car-show '50s have returned to the mid-'90s with a vengeance.
Editor's Note: We wish to warn our readers that the various color examples shown in this article were acquired under different lighting conditions with different cameras, lenses, filters and film, so they are not dead-bang accurate. But they are close and vivid enough not to be diminished by our high-speed printing process.
