The history of paintwork: How color came into the car world

Myths are often stronger than facts - even when it comes to car paint. "Any color, as long as it's black," Henry Ford is supposed to have said and only offered the Model T in black. But that's not true: the first mass-produced car was launched in 1908 in several colors. It was not until the seventh year that Ford made the change in order to speed up assembly line production. Later, there were again several colors. And the quote? Historians now believe that Ford only added it to the story later.

But at first everything was black. Not a beautiful black - but cobbler's pitch. When the Benz Patent-Motorwagen was the first car to be launched in 1886, it was coated with the oily substance as rust protection. Back then, cars were hardly ever painted because a brush-on paint job took days to dry. If the paintwork was damaged, it had to start all over again; partial painting was not yet possible due to the lack of color accuracy. Things only became more colorful when Albert Krautzberger patented his "compressed air-operated painting device" in 1902 and the first spray gun was joined by new nitrocellulose paints.

Soon many brands had "house colors" from motor racing: a Polish count had the idea of coloring racing cars according to nation. For example in red, which first stood for the USA and later for Italy. It is famous how Germany came to silver: before a race in 1934, the Mercedes race director noticed that the car weighed too much. And had the white paint on the aluminum body of the German racing cars sanded off: The "Silver Arrow" was born (from 1968, national colors were abolished because race sponsors preferred to see their corporate colors).

Things got cheerful in the 1950s: Pastel colors displaced olive, grey and brown tones of the World War, and color pictures, prints and film made the colors popular. But it was Ford, not Cadillac, that first offered pink. Why do we think of Cadillac when we think of pink? Because Elvis sang about the "Pink Cadillac". In the 1960s, acrylic paints and bright colors arrived. Lamborghini was the pioneer of these. Today, gray tones from water-based paints dominate. In Switzerland, gray (including silver) leads the way, followed by white and black. Worldwide, white leads over black.

The saying "the same in green" comes from car paint, by the way. The expression goes back to the Opel 4PS from 1924. It was green, which is why it was called the "leaf frog" - and Opel was sued by Citroën. Because this first German conveyor belt car was a copied Citroën 5 CV (Type C) from 1922, which was always yellow. A court therefore dismissed the lawsuit: the color was different. And from this, the German vernacular cheekily claimed that the Opel was just "the same in green".