Part 3: The Color...
It is a red-letter day! Why so? Well, one of the guys on this forum, Mark Kassab, started talking about yellows for his Unique 427 build. I read the thread here,
https://www.uniquecobra.com/forums/s...wpoints-wanted to see what he was thinking. Of course, I never expected it to include periwinkle! You will have to read it to find out about that comment! OK, it turned out to be a fun post, with some good-natured jabs mixed in!
This is a red-letter day because ten years ago, today, to the hour even, spd4me posted the photo, from Friedman's book, of a yellow CSX car in front of Shelby's Carter Road location. Reading that post was one of those small things that happen to change the course of things; it changed my life and project. I did a double-take when I saw it... WOW!, a yellow FIA-style car, I thought! I never realized that there was an original yellow FIA racer... this was something unique! There weren't many factory 289 race cars in that body style, to begin with, so seeing that photo began my quest to find out more information on the car.
Well, I called a guy I had just met at the time through Club Cobra - Jeff Gagnon. Jeff is an amazing guy, both on and off the Cobra playing field. He is a concours judge at SAAC, so he knows his stuff. He even built his own 289 car from scratch! If you haven't seen it already, you can check out the thread over on the other Cobra forum, under "289 Progress." Jeff reached out to one of his contacts, while we were on the phone, and I got the car's ID number - CSX 2459.
The photo in Friedman's book was from when Lew Florence, 2459's original owner, picked her up in the summer of 1964. It turns out it is a USRRC car, also known as an SCCA car, rather than an FIA car as I had originally thought. If I understand it correctly, the USRRC car does not have the oil cooler opening under the grill, nor the dimples on trunk, like the FIA cars. The experts can correct that if it is wrong. The car even had the grill in place!
Next, I began to search for any information about the car I could find and ended up on the SAAC forum. Fortunately, in June of 2010, I found someone who seemed to know something about the car. I reached out to Dr. Mark Hovander, another knowledgeable Shelby guru, and it turns out he knew Lew personally and had written a history of the car! We talked for a while and he told me stories of both Lew's and 2459's heyday racing together! He provided me with a photo history, including newspaper clippings - the whole works! I poured over that stuff until I knew it backwards and forwards! It was great! Thank you, Mark!
OK, back to the yellow color - if I was going to do a CSX 2459 tribute car, I needed to find out the original color, right? Well, easier said than done!
A few months went by and then, through Dr. Mark, I found out that Bill Kemper now had the car, after it went on a cross country journey - more on that, later. In November of 2010, I emailed Bill and waited for a response - and waited - and waited - and waited - and - you get the picture. Several months later, I was talking to Dr. Mark, and he suggested that a letter might get a better response. I wrote to Bill asking for information on the color, and waited - and waited - and waited - probably had the wrong address.
I kept looking. I was studying Ford paint color chips from 1964, and then from the 50's to the mid 60's. I found what looked like a close match in one of the yellows. Was there a way to verify it? I looked at both old photos and new photos. I tried to reach Bob Stalnaker, one of 2459's race mechanics - no luck getting through. I called Dr. Mark to see if he knew anything more, but again no luck; Lew had passed several years prior and gone was the history. Dr. Mark did tell me that when Lew ordered the car he told Shelby's guys to "paint it yellow." That was it.
As I was looking through Dr. Mark's book, I noticed a yellow Sunbeam Tiger in one of the photos that looked, at first glance, to be the same color as 2459. I recalled that Ken Miles drove a yellow Tiger, and there was Ken in the photo. I began to investigate that angle. I contacted the Tiger group. I talked to several members to no avail. It seems that the original Tiger was wrecked, stripped of the Shelby goodies, and cast aside. I went back and looked again, more closely, and it turns out that it is a different shade of yellow. Interestingly, it turns out that both Bill and I independently verified it as another dead end at about the same time!
A few years rolled by, and I went to a couple of SAAC events. That was great fun! In the process, I called Dr. Mark to see if he would be attending. Unfortunately, the events were not able to be on his schedule. However, during our conversation, about my project which continued to languish after the storm, he mentioned the restoration of the Dragon Snake, CSX 2427, one of very few original yellow Cobras. He thought it might be the same color. It was owned by Steven Juliano. I began to try to reach him. It took a while, but he got back to me. Unfortunately, the reason it took a while is that he had stage-4 cancer. I am sad to say he is gone, now. God rest his soul. It turns out that Steven had a connection to Southern Indiana and had 2427 at the Indiana SAAC meet several times. I was working in Indiana at the time and was only miles from it!! I never knew it was there. Bummer, another missed opportunity!
Steven was kind enough to point me in the direction of Nyle Wing and Dave Riley. Nyle did the paint work on the 2427 restoration. He does fantastic work. I reached out to Nyle and Dave. Dave never responded, though I tried multiple times. Nyle tried to reach Dave, as well. Nyle found out that Dave did not have any knowledge of the paint code. We tried to find the leftover paint, but that went to Steven and was lost to the wind. Lastly, we tried the paint supplier. We both called. They went into the archives and found that they had the record for the sale! But wait... no paint code record was there. Another dead end!
A couple of years later, I was finally ready to get back on the project and make some real progress. I brought 2459R to the Weavers at Unique Motorcars in Gadsden, AL, and dropped her off. On a whim, a couple of months later, I called Bill Kemper. He answered! In his defense, I found out that Bill is kinda old-school when it comes to email and technology. Makes sense! Excitedly, I explained my project and that I was hoping to find the original color. Bill was very gracious in sharing that he had rebuilt the car, and did not have much of the original sheet metal. The reason is that Jamie Bargelt, who owned and campaigned the car after Lew sold it, had crashed 2459 at Westwood, British Columbia, on a place called Dear's leap. It was bad enough that he parted her out and sold her carcass, which is when she went on a cross-country trip to Ohio, and then to Bill.
I found out that by then, the only thing Bill had left was the original driver's door skin, which had one of the side curtain ferules still left in it. Bargelt had stripped the car and painted it white. It seemed another dead end. Bill and I both knew it was yellow, and that was about it. Interestingly, Bill mentioned that the ferule was painted over white. As I thought about it, I surmised that they might have had trouble removing it at the time of the repaint and thus painted over it. A few weeks later, Bill called me back and announced that, while it was difficult to remove the ferule, once he got it off he had found a tiny amount of the original paint underneath. Yeehaw!! We might get it, after all. Interestingly, there was some other yellow paint on the door. From the photos in Dr. Mark's book, it appears that Lew repainted the car yellow before selling it.
Bill took the door skin to his paint guy, but, alas, the spot, actually the ring, under the ferule was too small to get an accurate reading. Bill spent several hours trying to match the color from old color books, but had no luck. We were both discouraged. In the meantime, I happened on some photos, from 1964, of Porsche Champagne Yellow. This was another close match. I ordered a color sample from John Willhoit, the Porsche restorer in California. He does great work! Wow, it looked good. It was a little more brown, but hey it seemed close. I sent it to Bill, who checked it against the door. It was close, but not an exact match. Hmmm, I went and got some other yellows, including Pastel yellow, a Dodge color, and sprayed them out. I even mixed different samples for custom color and sprayed them out. I sent all the samples back to Bill, and it turns out we found the right yellow color match! The fool's errand was over!
Now, we can begin to turn this buggy into a true 2459 tribute car! Let's get some body work done!
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True!
but wait until you see the results! Hope you are well! It has been too long... how is the 8-ball doing?
